Boxing welfare

Zeta Gorres is like a lot of patients at University Medical Center, Clark County’s only public hospital. He has piled up about $500,000 in bills since he suffered a traumatic brain injury, and he won’t be able to cover all the costs. Taxpayers are on the hook for most of the tab.

Mr. Gorres is quite different from every other UMC trauma patient in at least one respect. Better known as Z “The Dream” Gorres, the 27-year-old is a bantamweight professional boxer. His injuries were sustained in a Nov. 13 fight against Luis Melendez on the Strip.

After nearly two months of constant nursing care and physical therapy, and after requiring some of the most advanced medical procedures available, Mr. Gorres is making progress in becoming a “functional human being who will be able to care for his wife and four children,” according to Dr. Michael Casey, his trauma surgeon.

The taxpayers of Southern Nevada are, unfortunately, accustomed to covering tens of millions of dollars worth of uncompensated care at UMC every year for all types of indigent patients, including illegal immigrants. But why now, when UMC is facing an $82 million deficit, is the public being asked to provide welfare to a professional fighter whose injuries were sustained during a state-sanctioned bout?

The reason is a horribly outdated state law that requires promoters to provide only $50,000 worth of health insurance for each fighter in the ring. That amount might cover a single trauma surgery. It’s enough “99 percent of the time,” said Keith Kizer, executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission, but woefully inadequate in cases such as Mr. Gorres’.

Fighters are not required to carry their own health insurance or supplementary coverage, and as a result, they usually don’t. Mr. Gorres didn’t.

That has to stop. The Nevada Athletic Commission can’t expect the public, especially in this economy, to cover the costs of caring for injured fighters. The state must raise the minimum insurance requirement for professional bouts to $1 million per fighter or require promoters to pay into a pool that covers boxers’ medical bills for catastrophic injuries suffered in the ring.

We wish Mr. Gorres well in his recovery, and we want Las Vegas to remain the country’s pre-eminent location for title fights — our tourist economy greatly depends on them. But this is one more beating the public shouldn’t be forced to endure.