Boston Considers Bill That Would Cover Injured College Athletes

The city of Boston will debate a bill that would require colleges to pay all medical bills for athletes who are injured on the field.
The bill comes from city councilor Josh Zakim, a longtime critic of the NCAA and its stubborn refusal to even address concerns about their players’ safety or ensure that their medical bills are covered if they do get injured. The law wouldn’t just require schools to cover athletes’ bills for immediate injuries but also any and all subsequent injuries or illnesses they suffer that are related to the time they played sports in college. Zakim said that he’s talked to several students who have had to pay their own medical bills for injuries they sustained in the name of college athletics. Most are left with huge bills that they can’t pay and even though they have insurance, that often doesn’t cover all of the bills that doctors and hospitals can thrown at them.
The logistics may not have been worked out yet on the schools’ part because this is just a proposed bill but we think it’s a step in the right direction. Schools may not penalize students who can no longer play because they’ve been seriously injured on the field. They do leave them on their own to handle a lot of very expensive medical bills and since they don’t pay them a salary, it can leave them with even more debt than your average student loan. This bill at least forces the schools to start looking at the issue and hold themselves accountable for putting their student athletes at risk just for playing a simple game that nets them millions of dollars.