New Insurance Options for MMA Fighters. Comprehensive Coverage Still Lacking

The Honolulu Star Bulletin has a piece on the local implications of a change in policy at the national level for insurer AFLAC when it comes to covering extreme sports like mixed martial arts:

Last month the world's largest supplemental insurance provider expanded its accident plan to include coverage for all types of extreme sports, from sky diving to mixed martial arts.

"Ten times out of ten, if you participate in any of these sports, you're uninsurable," said Dustin Dean Deniz, Aflac district sales coordinator for Honolulu. "We're the only company that will specifically insure these types of events."

The policy is not primary medical insurance.

Aflac would assist policyholders with everyday household expenditures and lost wages. For example, Aflac would pay $250 a day for hospital confinement. Throw in another $400 a day if the policyholder is admitted into an intensive care unit.

The expansion for extreme sports has hiked up policy rates by a small margin. For an individual policy, a policy used to cost $24.10 a month, but is now $26.52. For a couple, it was $32.30, and now is $35.36.

While this is a nice change and adds options for fighters insofar as a secondary coverage, there still remains a lack of a viable, affordable primary option for the vast majority of fighters. Those on the very high end of the curve make enough to cover the large premiums required of an MMA fighter, but that only covers a small few in the upper reaches of the UFC and Strikeforce. Coverage remains a problem for most all fighters in MMA's big leagues, and nearly all toiling at the sport's lower levels.

Coverage as a function of a promotional contract seems a far fetched thing at this point. Primary medical coverage for fighters was a calling card of the IFL during their run, but was one of the first things to be shed when Jay Larkin was brought in to cut costs during the twilight of the fight league. When queried on the topic, UFC head Dana White is apoplectic in his throwing out the question "Do you know how much it would cost to cover 200 ultimate fighters?", a question surely asked for rhetorical value, because there is never a forthcoming answer from Dana that would indicate that any serious attention has been paid to the issue.

Any help or guidance from the athletic commission end of things doesn't seem especially promising either. ABC head honcho Tim Lueckenhoff offered one of the better "let them eat cake" moments since Marie Antoinette when he gave this whopper to the LVRJ on the topic of catastrophic coverage of MMA fighters injured in licensed fights:

Lueckenhoff said he thinks boxers personally should carry some insurance.

"I realize many of them are poor, but since they are professionals and this is their job, so to speak, boxers should carry other types of medical insurance as you and I do," he said.

While quite the libertarian sentiment, Lueckenhoff's stance is one divorced from the everyday reality that fighters face when it comes to injuries and insurance coverage. Coverage under a group plan nder some kind of fighter's association would be one option to bring costs for coverage into manageable realms, the willingness of fighters to form such a group has been lacking to this point. In the meantime, the medical bills keep adding up......