Posted on 05/18/2014 11:14:08 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
President Obama will bring athletes, coaches, academics and parents to the White House later this month for a summit on youth sports safety and the dangers of concussions, an administration official said Thursday.
"As both a parent and an avid sports fan, the president loves and appreciates the role that sports play in the lives of young people, and his administration is committed to helping ensure that children continue to be active and play sports safely," the official said in a statement.
At the forum, the president will argue for a "team approach" to preventing and treating concussions, the White House said, with hopes of raising awareness of how to identify, treat and prevent concussions among young athletes. Obama will also call for additional research into the field of sports-related concussions, with the hopes of developing ways to better avoid such injuries.
The concussion forum was first reported by The Washington Post.
The president told The New Yorker earlier this year that he'd be reticent to allow his son, if he had one, play professional football because of the risk of concussions. More than 4,500 former NFL players have sued the league over its handling of concussions, which doctors say can be associated with permanent memory loss and behavioral changes.
Concussions have also been linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a progressive degenerative brain disease.
“I would not let my son play pro football,” Obama told the magazine's editor, David Remnick, a former sportswriter. “But, I mean, you wrote a lot about boxing, right? We’re sort of in the same realm.”
Still, the president also said current NFL players “know what they’re doing” and understood the impact that concussions could have on their long-term health.
“At this point, there’s a little bit of caveat emptor,” Obama said. “These guys, they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re buying into. It is no longer a secret. It’s sort of the feeling I have about smokers, you know?”
The NFL agreed to a $765 million settlement with attorneys representing the former players last summer, under which it did not admit any liability or that brain injuries were the result of playing football.
A federal judge has not yet approved the deal over concerns the payout, which would be split among former players and medical researchers, would not be enough.
He wouldn’t allow his son(if he had one) to play PROFESSIONAL football...
I guess being a dictator you can ban anyone at anytime from engaging in any activity you deem unsafe, right??
Or maybe he’s just too stupid to realize that by thetime your eligible to play Pro Football, your also of legal age to make YOUR OWN DECISIONS
How does he do it? How does he find the time to address an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with his job? Maybe Joe Biden can hold a summit on how many chocolate chips should be in a chocolate chip cookie.
What about those Benghazi concussions you traitor
The assumption, here, is that you are too stupid to raise your own kids.
My daughter bumped her head playing volleyball, so we brought her to a doctor to have her looked at. She checked out completely fine, but the doctor would not sign off on her returning to play until she had taken a week off and gone through two weeks of pointless rehab therapy, all provided, conveniently, in the brand new Concussion Center at the hospital. Three weeks and thousands of dollars from my insurance company later, we got the sign-off, a week after the end of the season.
It was all a scam. Once you walk through the door, they are going to extract $5000 from your insurance company, no matter what, before you get the certification required by the state to return to play. Next time, I will just check the kid out myself and avoid being fed into the money-extraction machine.
1) Remnick was a sports writer?
2) Obama has a son?
You can bet your bottom dollar that all of the techs, nurses and rehab assistants employed by this boondoggle will be dues paying members of the SEIU.
That sounds like medical overkill; if no disability and no injury and no provable likelihood of either then no need for rehab. On the other hand, I wonder if this is driven by the fear of lawsuit, not just the hope of profit. That $X000 bill is the rack rate and probably is reimbursed at close to cost by the insurance company.
What did Chicago manure ever do to deserve such a slur. Surely it is better than Barack’s idea of wisdom.
In this state, once you bring the child in with any kind of bump on the head, a notice goes to the State of New Jersey, that must be cleared before the kid can even participate in PE, much less a sport. At that point they have what you need, and they will extract as much money as they can before they will give it to you.
Keep in mind that insurance reimbursement rates are close to cost.
Smoke & mirrors
Dog & pony
Hooker & donkey
Circus
I’m sure they are. But the costs were high. And all of the money paid to otherwise unemployable Service Employee International Union members was unnecessary.
California has a bill in process that would limit full contact practice to two times a week.
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/bill-limits-full-contact-youth-football-drills-23739413
Does anyone know if 0bama ever played organized football? Pop Warner, high school, etc.?
5.56mm
For comparison purposes, when I was about 12 (back in ‘63), I was testing the new speedometer on my big 26 inch Schwinn. I remember it reading 45 mph...next thing I know, I’m waking up in my house 16 hours later with a horrible headache. Naturally, I hit a pothole, went over the handlebars and landed on my head.
Mom and Dad called the Doc and he said “Is that him screaming in the background?” Dad said “Yes, that’s him.” (I was still out cold). Doc said “He’ll be fine. Keep him to rest for a day.”
With all the problems our country faces, here and abroad, Obama should stay out of the sports concussions and other sports issues. Let the high school, college and pro associations explore the issues.
Obama has no focus, he jumps from whatever is today’s headline to whatever comes up another day, none of which are a national security or survival matter. Number one should be our lagging economy—he and his regulators and economists should back off as none of the big government interventions have worked so far—let a more free market and small business approach work on the economy.
Between faggotry and concussion hysteria, liberals will eventually kill football. Maybe by then we can finally have Civil War II. (I know. Pipedream. We will probably go as quietly as a fart in the wind).
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