The same was once said about hockey... litigation followed by high $$$ settlements often "paves" the way towards better safety innovations.
The injury rate in hockey, as in many other sports like (American) football, has gone up since the introduction of helmets and other safety gear:
http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/36/6/410.fullThis is a very important point that people who push safety gear, for one reason or another, choose to ignore.
That's not surprising - people who are less afraid of injuries play more aggressively. If figure skaters wore helmets, the same thing would almost certainly happen there.
The simple fact is that people enjoy taking risks. Further, competition and performing before an audience both drive people to take greater risks.
"Litigation followed by high $$$ settlements" really just paves the way towards greater sales of safety gear, but increases injuries.
I don't think it inconceivable that something minimalist along the lines of the Ice Halo, and minimalist padding elsewhere might someday be required in figure skating. I just don't think that it will achieve the injury reduction goal for competitive skaters. However, it might be helpful to beginning skaters. Some rinks and lesson programs require or encourage beginners to wear such things now.
(On the other hand, the
death rate in (American) football and a number of other sports has gone done since the introduction of helmets and other safety gear...)
One of the most intriguing results of safety gear has been that American football (which uses a lot of safety equipment) has more injuries per hour of play than Rugby (which uses none, but is otherwise substantially similar), but they have about the same injury rate per game. That suggests that athletes and coaches have an "acceptable" fraction of time being injured.