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Post by Red Impact on Aug 23, 2013 16:31:59 GMT -5
Has it been mentioned how hard it is for wrestlers to get insurance? I mean, they can, but it's very costly. Considering most of the X division and KOs aren't making huge amounts of money, it's no wonder you have so many of these situations. TNA either need to start including insurance in their contracts or paying people enough to be able to get it. It's more complicated an issue than just "Why didn't they have insurance?" It's less complicated than having insurance and about as simple as opening a bank account and putting some of your pay in it. A rainy day fund doesn't necessarily mean insurance, you can pay for medical care with actual money as well. Do you know how expensive a major neck surgery is? Putting away 20 dollars from your wrestling shows for a few years isn't exactly going to cut it, and if you think a 23-year-old is going to have the time to build that up, I don't really know what to tell you.
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Post by TK The Friendly Robot on Aug 23, 2013 16:39:02 GMT -5
It's less complicated than having insurance and about as simple as opening a bank account and putting some of your pay in it. A rainy day fund doesn't necessarily mean insurance, you can pay for medical care with actual money as well. Do you know how expensive a major neck surgery is? Putting away 20 dollars from your wrestling shows for a few years isn't exactly going to cut it, and if you think a 23-year-old is going to have the time to build that up, I don't really know what to tell you. I was more talking in general seen as Konnan and Daffney had been brought up. As far as bank charges go for some reason I've been lucky enough to never face them it seems.
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Post by Red Impact on Aug 23, 2013 16:48:46 GMT -5
Do you know how expensive a major neck surgery is? Putting away 20 dollars from your wrestling shows for a few years isn't exactly going to cut it, and if you think a 23-year-old is going to have the time to build that up, I don't really know what to tell you. I was more talking in general seen as Konnan and Daffney had been brought up. As far as bank charges go for some reason I've been lucky enough to never face them it seems. A good rainy day fund is considered 3 months salary, this bills can easily add up and dwarf a year's salary for most people. People often have trouble even if they have insurance. While hospitals will charge less to people paying in cash, I think you and Sor underestimate the financial burden, and overestimate how much indie wrestlers make, quite a bit.
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Post by CrazySting on Aug 23, 2013 17:22:54 GMT -5
It's less complicated than having insurance and about as simple as opening a bank account and putting some of your pay in it. A rainy day fund doesn't necessarily mean insurance, you can pay for medical care with actual money as well. Honestly how would go about this, banks charge to have a minimum balance then with interest fees its hard to do. Indy guys don't make a lot of money they have bills to pay, possibly mouths to feed, they have to feed themselves and worry about paying for transportation to and from shows hotel rooms its not as easy as you make it out to be. I am 27 and barely have 200 dollars saved up Also, I imagine Sorensen's bills were hundreds of thousands of dollars. How many 23 year olds have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank?
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chazraps
Wade Wilson
Better have my money when I come-a collect!
Posts: 28,275
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Post by chazraps on Aug 23, 2013 17:42:43 GMT -5
Actually, since Sorensen is 23, and his mother had insurance, he was on his mom's plan anyway, according to the law passed 3 years ago. He is on her plan until he's 27. For the record, it's 26. Not that that changes anything, but incase someone was reading this thread and thinking "SWEET, I'M GOOD FOR ANOTHER YEAR!" I had to point that out.
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Post by CrazySting on Aug 23, 2013 17:45:01 GMT -5
There's a lot of "They're independent contractors, Jesse has no legal hope" in this thread. I dunno, there have been a LOT of cases regarding the rights of independent contractors the past few years and juries tend to favor the contractor. Generally, court cases tend to favor independent contractors. That TNA has a history of settling with people (Konnan, Daffney) is a good reason for Sorensen to take legal action.I doubt TNA would want to tarnish its image even more by fighting the guy in a lengthy court case, either. It would be interesting to see if Zema being allowed to do that move in the first place ever came out. If Zema ran it past a road agent and he or she ignored the fact that the move was clearly too close to the guardrail to be safe (Ion tucked his legs in to avoid hitting the rail, which is why he landed on Sorensen the way he did), Sorensen could have a very good case here.
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Post by Michael Coello on Aug 23, 2013 17:52:55 GMT -5
There's a lot of "They're independent contractors, Jesse has no legal hope" in this thread. I dunno, there have been a LOT of cases regarding the rights of independent contractors the past few years and juries tend to favor the contractor. Generally, court cases tend to favor independent contractors. That TNA has a history of settling with people (Konnan, Daffney) is a good reason for Sorensen to take legal action.I doubt TNA would want to tarnish its image even more by fighting the guy in a lengthy court case, either. It would be interesting to see if Zema being allowed to do that move in the first place ever came out. If Zema ran it past a road agent and he or she ignored the fact that the move was clearly too close to the guardrail to be safe (Ion tucked his legs in to avoid hitting the rail, which is why he landed on Sorensen the way he did), Sorensen could have a very good case here. Why do you keep acting like it was some forbidden, untested move? It was a corner moonsault. It's not that complex a move. Even I could do that.
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Post by CrazySting on Aug 23, 2013 17:57:00 GMT -5
Generally, court cases tend to favor independent contractors. That TNA has a history of settling with people (Konnan, Daffney) is a good reason for Sorensen to take legal action.I doubt TNA would want to tarnish its image even more by fighting the guy in a lengthy court case, either. It would be interesting to see if Zema being allowed to do that move in the first place ever came out. If Zema ran it past a road agent and he or she ignored the fact that the move was clearly too close to the guardrail to be safe (Ion tucked his legs in to avoid hitting the rail, which is why he landed on Sorensen the way he did), Sorensen could have a very good case here. Why do you keep acting like it was some forbidden, untested move? It was a corner moonsault. It's not that complex a move. Even I could do that. The moonsault was fine, but it was clearly not a great position to do it. Ion didn't have enough space to move, which is why it happened. Am I saying TNA meant for it to happen? No, of course not. But maybe some road agent should have went over the match with them and told Ion to do the move in the ring instead.
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SOR
Unicron
Posts: 2,611
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Post by SOR on Aug 23, 2013 18:36:19 GMT -5
It's less complicated than having insurance and about as simple as opening a bank account and putting some of your pay in it. A rainy day fund doesn't necessarily mean insurance, you can pay for medical care with actual money as well. Honestly how would go about this, banks charge to have a minimum balance then with interest fees its hard to do. Indy guys don't make a lot of money they have bills to pay, possibly mouths to feed, they have to feed themselves and worry about paying for transportation to and from shows hotel rooms its not as easy as you make it out to be. I am 27 and barely have 200 dollars saved up Someone like Sorensen who is young and working regularly on TV would of been making good money before the incident. Probably 300-400 a night from indy promoters and probably the general rate everyone from TNA gets (About 500 bucks a week) You figure he works 15 dates a month that's around 5-6 grand a month. Throw in a few hundred that he'd do in merch sales and it's not a horrible living. Most indy promoters have to pay the transport to the airport and most of the time they'll pick the worker up from the airport and get him home so transport would only be an issue in TNA and even then he's probably travelling with 2-3 others so it'd be pretty minimal if you really think about it. Not to mention most of TNA's TV was from the Impact Zone when he got hurt so he'd only be doing the House Show circuit. I'm not making the argument that the dude should of had hundred of thousands put away because he's only 23 and probably never expected this to happen but we can't make the argument of "Poor guy, TNA are monsters" because in reality he should of had 5-10 thousand saved up in case this stuff happened. There's a lot of "They're independent contractors, Jesse has no legal hope" in this thread. I dunno, there have been a LOT of cases regarding the rights of independent contractors the past few years and juries tend to favor the contractor. Generally, court cases tend to favor independent contractors. That TNA has a history of settling with people (Konnan, Daffney) is a good reason for Sorensen to take legal action.I doubt TNA would want to tarnish its image even more by fighting the guy in a lengthy court case, either. It would be interesting to see if Zema being allowed to do that move in the first place ever came out. If Zema ran it past a road agent and he or she ignored the fact that the move was clearly too close to the guardrail to be safe (Ion tucked his legs in to avoid hitting the rail, which is why he landed on Sorensen the way he did), Sorensen could have a very good case here. How is Sorensen going to prove that a person in TNA's office said the move was fine to perform? Also a judge is rightly going to ask if Sorensen is so upset about TNA allegedly not paying his medical bills why he stayed on pay roll for another year or so. That'll be an interesting explanation won't it?
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Post by Red Impact on Aug 23, 2013 20:10:29 GMT -5
Honestly how would go about this, banks charge to have a minimum balance then with interest fees its hard to do. Indy guys don't make a lot of money they have bills to pay, possibly mouths to feed, they have to feed themselves and worry about paying for transportation to and from shows hotel rooms its not as easy as you make it out to be. I am 27 and barely have 200 dollars saved up Also, I imagine Sorensen's bills were hundreds of thousands of dollars. How many 23 year olds have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank? Do we know how long he was hospitalized and how many surgeries he had? Hundreds of Thousands sounds a bit high too me, but it is possible depending on what he had to have done. Someone like Sorensen who is young and working regularly on TV would of been making good money before the incident. Probably 300-400 a night from indy promoters and probably the general rate everyone from TNA gets (About 500 bucks a week) You figure he works 15 dates a month that's around 5-6 grand a month. Throw in a few hundred that he'd do in merch sales and it's not a horrible living. Most indy promoters have to pay the transport to the airport and most of the time they'll pick the worker up from the airport and get him home so transport would only be an issue in TNA and even then he's probably travelling with 2-3 others so it'd be pretty minimal if you really think about it. Not to mention most of TNA's TV was from the Impact Zone when he got hurt so he'd only be doing the House Show circuit. I'm not making the argument that the dude should of had hundred of thousands put away because he's only 23 and probably never expected this to happen but we can't make the argument of "Poor guy, TNA are monsters" because in reality he should of had 5-10 thousand saved up in case this stuff happened. Transport depends on a lot of factors. Even if they pay for a plane ticket, which isn't a given, they don't necessarily pay for all other other costs, hence why some guys tend to sleep in their cars to save money, something that wouldn't be required if promoters paid for the entirity of travel. They may travel and room together to save money, but there's no way you can logically write those costs off as minimal. How do you figure 15 dates a month? Wrestling shows tend to be on Fridays and Saturdays, and not every month even has 5 full weekends. Sorensen can physically only be at 1 show a night, and logic dictates that he's probably not going to be able to travel to three separate shows every weekend in three different cities, and most promoters aren't going to be doing 3 shows a weekends. And that's not even taking TNA shows into account is it? He can't physically be working 15 indie dates and TNA's required dates, so that throws your revenue assumptions off entirely. Of course, those numbers are probably made up entirely, so we have no way of knowing how accurate it is, but if we put those numbers with a more conservative indie dates figure, say 8, and we don't get anything close to $5000-$10000 by the time he got injured (which would be around 1 year after he went in TNA) Average cost of living is about $5000 a month, and depending where he lives in Texas, that's about average. 8 dates at $400 a night, minus rental car (assume $80 a weekend if we're being generous and pretending that he can get someone to ride every single show to split the costs) and that gives us $2560. I don't know where the $500 a week comes from, but we can use those numbers and we still get about $5060 a month. Now, assuming $5000 of that will be cut out for normal living, leaving him with $60 extra each month. For this "made up finances exercise" we're ignoring a lot of factors, like any extra gas required for travel, and leisure costs, any cut TNA has, and any extra money he might get doing other things or for appearing on TNA's shows. So, $720 a year extra for that year he was in working in TNA, and he's been fully on the indie circuit for about 2 years prior to that. Those numbers just don't add up to 10,000 extra in the bank, and even if we fuzzied up the figures even more (not really possible since they're fabricated in the first place) to get closer to that amount, that's still not going to cover that big of a chunk of the medical care that he had to have. The guy was only wrestling for a few years prior to his TNA contract, and those were as an unknown, so he's not demanding a high paycheck for those. The one or so years that he was with TNA isn't going to get him that much spare money in the bank, and that commitment is probably going to cut significantly into his indie show time. Unless we greatly increase the amount of money he was commanding per show, I just don't see how we get to $10,000 in the bank. Also a judge is rightly going to ask if Sorensen is so upset about TNA allegedly not paying his medical bills why he stayed on pay roll for another year or so. That'll be an interesting explanation won't it? "TNA promised to take care of me, and I believed them. Afterall, I was seriously injured in a show for them and I didn't have any reason not to believe them. My firing came so suddenly that I didn't know how to react, because from my conversations with them, they still indicated that they were going to help me out more than they did." Less interesting and more predictable. Afterall, why wouldn't he take a job from them if he thought that they were going to go ahead and cover a more significant chunk of the costs? There's not a whole lot else he could do while recovering from that serious of an injury, afterall. He's not going to get hired when he can barely move his head, and he's an independent contractor, so no unemployment options.
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Post by CrazySting on Aug 23, 2013 20:39:54 GMT -5
Also, I imagine Sorensen's bills were hundreds of thousands of dollars. How many 23 year olds have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank? Do we know how long he was hospitalized and how many surgeries he had? Hundreds of Thousands sounds a bit high too me, but it is possible depending on what he had to have done. I'd be shocked if it WASN'T hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was in the hospital for a while, was seriously injured and would have needed a great deal of stuff done. And that's just in the initial stay. What about the hospital visists and MRIs afterwards? I remember Lance Storm mentioning that when Jericho's wife had premature twins the total bill was something like $1 million dollars. Yeah, health care costs in America are f***ing crazy.
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Post by Red Impact on Aug 23, 2013 20:53:17 GMT -5
Do we know how long he was hospitalized and how many surgeries he had? Hundreds of Thousands sounds a bit high too me, but it is possible depending on what he had to have done. I'd be shocked if it WASN'T hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was in the hospital for a while, was seriously injured and would have needed a great deal of stuff done. And that's just in the initial stay. What about the hospital visists and MRIs afterwards? I remember Lance Storm mentioning that when Jericho's wife had premature twins the total bill was something like $1 million dollars. Yeah, health care costs in America are f***ing crazy. What you have to realize is that there's absolutely no standard for costs. A hospital will basically take the cost of doing a procedure and multiply it by a random number, and then negotiate that with the insurers/payers to determine how much they really pay (it's a crazy-ass system, I agree). I could buy his initial costs being in the 60K or so range, depending on how long he was in the hospital (average cost of a serious neck surgery is around 11K according ot the health care blue book, his was emergency and he had a lengthier stay), but even adding physical therapy and post-op diagnostics I don't know if hundreds of thousands really seems that likely. A hundred thousand maybe, but I don't know how much higher than that I think it'd be. Now, a hundred thousand is going to be far, far, far more than any twenty-something is going to have in the bank unless they were rich beforehand, and it's a number that could still bankrupt someone. Anything dealing with babies is just going to be more experience. IT's an entire different field with it's own specialists, specialized equipment, and usually special floor of the hospital.
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Glitch
Grimlock
Not Going To Die; Childs, we're goin' out to give Blair the test. If he tries to make it back here and we're not with him... burn him.
Watching you.
Posts: 12,787
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Post by Glitch on Aug 23, 2013 21:17:53 GMT -5
Each time medical costs and wrestlers are brought up, a lot of posters from foreign nations don't seem to comprehend that this is America!
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2013 22:33:00 GMT -5
Pretty wild that some are defending TNA's right to not pay medical bills for these lowly, less-than-people "independent contractors". It's not about contracts, it's about doing the right thing. People like to trumpet how TNA has this billion dollar backing and they'll never go out of business. If that's the case, pay your workers' medical bills when they get hurt wrestling for you. Simple as that.
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Post by CrazySting on Aug 23, 2013 22:45:24 GMT -5
Let's be honest: Dixie Carter just has a weird f***** up moral compass.
She visited Sorensen in the hospital room. She was by his side. She spoke with his mom and told her to stay strong and that things would be OK. I'm sure, in her mind, she was being very genuine.
But, for whatever reason, that didn't translate over to "We need to take care of this guy and 100% of his medical bills."
As opposed to Vince McMahon, who probably wouldn't have been been holding his hand, but WOULD have paid the medical bills in full.
Personally, I would have rather had the bills covered than a few hugs, and I think most people would too.
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Post by Tiger Millionaire on Aug 23, 2013 23:26:55 GMT -5
Honestly how would go about this, banks charge to have a minimum balance then with interest fees its hard to do. Indy guys don't make a lot of money they have bills to pay, possibly mouths to feed, they have to feed themselves and worry about paying for transportation to and from shows hotel rooms its not as easy as you make it out to be. I am 27 and barely have 200 dollars saved up Someone like Sorensen who is young and working regularly on TV would of been making good money before the incident. Probably 300-400 a night from indy promoters and probably the general rate everyone from TNA gets (About 500 bucks a week) You figure he works 15 dates a month that's around 5-6 grand a month. Throw in a few hundred that he'd do in merch sales and it's not a horrible living. Most indy promoters have to pay the transport to the airport and most of the time they'll pick the worker up from the airport and get him home so transport would only be an issue in TNA and even then he's probably travelling with 2-3 others so it'd be pretty minimal if you really think about it. Not to mention most of TNA's TV was from the Impact Zone when he got hurt so he'd only be doing the House Show circuit. I'm not making the argument that the dude should of had hundred of thousands put away because he's only 23 and probably never expected this to happen but we can't make the argument of "Poor guy, TNA are monsters" because in reality he should of had 5-10 thousand saved up in case this stuff happened. Generally, court cases tend to favor independent contractors. That TNA has a history of settling with people (Konnan, Daffney) is a good reason for Sorensen to take legal action.I doubt TNA would want to tarnish its image even more by fighting the guy in a lengthy court case, either. It would be interesting to see if Zema being allowed to do that move in the first place ever came out. If Zema ran it past a road agent and he or she ignored the fact that the move was clearly too close to the guardrail to be safe (Ion tucked his legs in to avoid hitting the rail, which is why he landed on Sorensen the way he did), Sorensen could have a very good case here. How is Sorensen going to prove that a person in TNA's office said the move was fine to perform? Also a judge is rightly going to ask if Sorensen is so upset about TNA allegedly not paying his medical bills why he stayed on pay roll for another year or so. That'll be an interesting explanation won't it? I think you're a great poster, but when it comes to money matters, I think you're typically way off of how an average person, specifically a professional wrestler lives, and how difficult it is to just save money. I don't know about your situation, I'd garner you've been pretty lucky, but alot of people are not.
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Post by Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!! on Aug 24, 2013 10:39:40 GMT -5
I largely agree with the finance figures being thrown around, but Cost of Living being $5000 a month seems absurd to me. a halfway decent full-time job gives you maybe $2-3000 a month.
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Post by Red Impact on Aug 24, 2013 10:45:47 GMT -5
I largely agree with the finance figures being thrown around, but Cost of Living being $5000 a month seems absurd to me. a halfway decent full-time job gives you maybe $2-3000 a month. That's the national average, it's going to vary quite a bit based on where you live. More expensive places will pay more for a full time job, which less expensive places will usually pay less. I used it because most major cities in Texas, where he's billed from, are about average, and since we're basically making up how much he makes, it seemed fair to actually use a verifiable number in how much it cost. Smaller and more rural areas are often cheaper, but there'd be trade off as traveling to those places would likely eat a chunk of the advantage.
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Post by Crusty Ruffles on Aug 24, 2013 16:31:17 GMT -5
I work in healthcare and health insurance. That type of injury, care, and hospitalization easily goes past $250,000. What his portion of that to pay was is up in the air depending on insurance. I'd actually be really surprised that any kind of health insurance would pay that since it's a work-related injury. This is just from personal experience, though. Every company and insurance policy is different.
Companies here in America do whatever they can to get out of worker's comp claims. For example, my mother drives a bus for the City of Milwaukee. A woman ran a red light and t-boned the bus right by the driver's seat. My mom get fairly messed up. The woman that hit her came in the bus and was on tape (they have surveillance cameras, obviously) saying she was texting, my mother had 16 signed witness statements from passengers saying the woman blew the light, and the cops found no fault on my mom for what happened. When she was off work and filed the worker's comp claim, the company still denied her. Wrap your head around that one. Three years later, she's still fighting for $30,000 worth of medical bills that have royally f***ed her credit. I know that since Sorensen is an independent contractor this type of thing doesn't apply, but hopefully that gives some people context onto how broken a system like this can be.
Back to the issue at hand, if a guy literally breaks his neck for you -- the right thing to do is take care of him if you can. TNA, for all their "financial issues", are in a position to do that and may have consciously decided not to depending on who you believe. They may have given him a job for a while, they may have bought a plane ticket for his mom, but this release just looks bad. When people like SoCal Val, whom I love dearly, are rumored to be making 6 figures there is a way to keep this special case on the payroll in some capacity. I'll keep an open mind if someone from TNA decides to respond, which I doubt will ever happen, but this really looks like a crappy move by them.
I also have no problem if Jesse turns this into some kind of gimmick -- if he's truthful. Obviously money is a big part of this issue, so if he has to use what happened to him as a way to become marketable to other companies, then so be it. However, if this isn't actually truthful then I have a problem with him smearing TNA as some big evil just for personal gain. He should start his own dirtsheet website to do that.
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Post by CrazySting on Aug 24, 2013 16:42:09 GMT -5
Truthfully, if Sorensen was really smearing TNA, why hasn't anyone there come out to say "Hey, Jesse is lying. We paid his bills in full"? I'm sure there could be documentation too that could be used as proof. It's been what, one week since this story broke, but no one has come out to deny it.
Why is that? Probably because they can't.
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