From the Chicago Tribune:
For high school athletes and their loved ones, concussions can bring a fear of the unknown.
How many blows are too many? What are the short-term financial costs of treatment? What are the long-term costs of returning to action before the brain has healed?
In an attempt to assuage the monetary concerns, the IHSA is in the process of making concussion insurance available to its member schools beginning in the 2018-19 school year.
Schools will be offered the opportunity to purchase this insurance at the rate of $1.50 per athlete regardless of how many sports each athlete plays. The insurance will only be available on a school-by-school basis, and not to individual families.
Craig Anderson, executive director of the IHSA, emailed athletic directors with information about the concussion insurance during the last week of March.
"This is another tool to provide peace of mind and provide a barrier against serious injury," said Darren Howard, the lead athletic director for Oswego Community Unit School District 308 and the person who first contacted the IHSA and suggested it offer concussion insurance.
The policy, which is called the HeadStrong Concussion Insurance Program and is sold by Kansas-based Dissinger Reed, provides accident medical concussion coverage, including neurological follow-up, according to the company website.
The HeadStrong policy requires a minimum of 3,500 student-athletes, covers medical bills up to $25,000 per injury for concussion-specific care for 12 months after the injury and requires no copays, deductibles or out-of-pocket costs for the parents, according to Dissinger Reed owner and CEO Christian Reed.
He said that the insurance covers injuries suffered in school-organized and school-sanctioned competitions or practices for IHSA-sanctioned sports.
"If there is a severe concussion in the middle of a game, we cover everything from that point forward: the ambulance ride to the hospital, an overnight stay, monitoring, follow-up care and doctors appointments. All that is covered," Reed said.
He added: "We don't dictate whom they see, or how many times. If it's medically necessary, our policy will pay.
Read more from the Chicago Tribune.
