May 2, 2017State Will Offer Insurance
The Wisconsin Interscholastic Activities Association has approved of a policy that will provide all student-athletes at its member schools with concussion insurance. According to an article in the Journal Sentinel, the plan will cover about 80,000 athletes in grades 6-12, and will begin on August 1, 2017.
“The potential cost to a kid or a family should not be the reason that they don’t get the diagnosis, the care, the follow-up treatment that they should have if there is a concussion,” said WIAA Executive Director Dave Anderson. “This is good for kids.”
The cost of the insurance is about $121,000 per year, and it will cover any student participating in games or practices authorized by the WIAA. While providing needed care for athletes, the plan will also add a layer of protection for schools in the case of a lawsuit.
“We have a long history of trying to do good things with and around head injury,” said Anderson. “We’re the first state that required a kid not to be able to return if they were suspected to be unconscious.”
“And if we ever have to defend ourselves in one of those sort of concussion lawsuits, it may or may not make any difference, but we will be able to point to the fact that we’ve done a lot of things over a lot of years in a moral and conscientious sort of way to try to do things right,” he continued.
Michigan, Montana, and Arizona are the only other states to offer their student-athletes this type of insurance.
