Further to yesterday’s post, there is a very interesting interview by Nick Smith with Kathryn Ryan from this morning, here.
In answer to some of the commenters on the original post the approach to claims for surgery has changed.
The Accident Compensation Corporation turned down 3500 more claims for surgery in the last financial year than in the year before. He (Nick Smith) said it’s necessary for a greater number of operations to be funded by the health system to contain ACC’s costs.
In other words surgery decisions are being made for financial, not medical reasons. This runs totally against what Nick Smith told Parliament last week, and is breach of the social contract that underlies ACC.
Figures!
And the idiocy of all this is that it is all money from the same original source anyway and makign people wait longer jsut makes the problems worse and more expensive to fix!
Nick also said that if ACC makes too easy to get treatment then business won’t need to bother so much with safety precautions. Wot! This is a reason to toughen up on victims of accidents?!
Oh this is getting worse and worse – yes Dr Smith, it is so EASY to get ACC payments at the moment!
The bonus is now I can cut & paste this on billboards all over the country (Nelson) and no opposition party (or myself) will have it added to the expense account.
Jeremy: I expect that you meant that your billboards would have the above : “The Accident Compensation Corporation turned down 3500 more….” etc?
Shortened it could be a Tui:
“The Accident Compensation Corporation turned down 3500 more claims. These are now funded by the Health system.” Yeah Right!
Oh well- a bit wordy but….
Being Easter maybe if I nail a semi naked man to the billboard with a tag line like – ACC refused my claim telling me I had a preexisting condition!
???
So next will the Govt announced the waiting lists are getting smaller and let everyone think its because of more efficiency not less people getting what they need.
People being turned down for surgery are not “wasters”, they are people with genuine health/physical problems… their deteriorating health, loss of wages… will lead to…?
It is quite clear they are preparing for privatisation of ACC.
“In our review we argue that New Zealand’s implementation of the Woodhouse Principles via the ACC scheme has afforded New
Zealand’s society and economy four decades of added economic
and social value. Measuring this value is difficult, and requires consideration of the systems which may have developed in New Zealand in the absence of ACC. For this “alternative scenario” model we have applied the prevailing environment found in other industrialised nations, which features fault-based tort liability for most injuries currently covered by ACC.” PWC 2008
Privatising ACC means turning it into an insurance company. Insurance companies make their money by NOT paying out on claims.
“A higher portion of total costs (up to 90% in some schemes)
goes directly to claimants’ benefits compared to perhaps only
50% in liability systems.7
• Benefits commence payment more quickly than in tort
systems. The average settlement completion in the US tort
system is 15 to 20 months, whereas benefits flow in 3 weeks
on average in an uncontested workers’ compensation claim,
and 4 months in contested claims.7
• Claimant outcomes appear better under periodic no-fault
systems. A study by PwC for WorkCover NSW (a blended
system) followed the outcomes for over 1,000 claimants
receiving compensation under alternative compensation
pathways. After standardisation for known variables, Common
Law and Commutations claimants were found to have poorer
health outcomes and worse return to work rates than those
receiving no-fault weekly benefits.” PWC
So what will NZ look like under a privatised ACC (that is insurance system)
“New Zealand without the ACC
It is impossible to say what New Zealand would look like for injured
people without the ACC, but we have considered a scenario which
looks rather like the typical situation in Canada, the US and
Australia, featuring:
• a mandatory scheme for work injuries, roughly similar to the
current ACC work account, which represents roughly 24% of
the ACC claimants receiving benefits beyond treatment
• tort liability under common law available for all other injury
victims
• a range of fault-based insurances, including a mandatory
motor injuries scheme (likely including a low level of first-party
no-fault benefits available for less serious injuries) as well as a
mixture of mandatory and voluntary other private insurances,
such as product liability, professional indemnity, medical
malpractice, public liability, and personal accident and income
protection
We estimate that roughly 5% of current ACC claimants would
be able to prove fault and claim in this category.
• a social security and public health system, similar to the
present one, but with a likely higher level of private health
insurance. Roughly 70% of current ACC claimants would
receive benefits only from these systems.”
People get back to work more quickly through ACC
“Faster return-to-work Compared with other workers compensation systems, ACC performs well in terms of return-to-work. The clearest comparative evidence is for workers’ compensation schemes across Australia, where the ACC (88% of claimants returned to work within six months) outperforms both the Australian average (85%) and all three comparable schemes (the state monopoly schemes of NSW 86%, Victoria 85% and South Australia 77%), with similar results for
durable (longer-term) return to work”
“ACC performance overall Overall, summarising our observations thus far, we conclude that the current ACC scheme is consistent with the Woodhouse Principles,
adds considerable value to New Zealand society and economy and performs very well in comparison to alternative schemes in operation internationally. Our review now looks forward to the future of ACC.”
National like to pretend this report doesnt exist. They also want everyone to believe that privatising, or “opening ACC to competition” will mean we have lots of ACC-like systems for better rpices. That is a nonsense. NO OTHER provider is anything like ACC.
IF you want to peruse the report, not as long as you might think
http://www.accfutures.org.nz/assets/downloads/PricewaterhouseCoopersACCreport.pdf
Sorry, page 25 has a useful analysis of future risks for ACC.
Tracey, They have to get the money for “whanau ora” somewhere!
Whanau Ora must have goof opportunities for private providers or national would not entertain it.
That is the model they like to persue. Tou may have the luxury of paying to top up services, and we know where that leads.
@John W – He he he, I like the term “goof opportunities”
ACC’s culture has been such that genuine claimants over a number of years have had to fight for their entitlements through litigation. This is against the original intent of the ‘no fault’ system, where the right to sue was taken away. You just need to go to the ’screwedbyacc’ site to see the problems that exsist. Labour did little, whilst in office to change the culture within ACC, under National, the problems will increase due to their cost cutting exercises. I wonder how much ACC is spending on litigation to deny genuine claimants entitlements to treatment/surgery/ERC? According to ACC’s Laurie Edwards, ACC win 75% of declined claims taken to review, but it is believed these statistics are inaccurate as it does not account for the number of claimants who go on to win an appeal at court level or who don’t take their decline decisions to review usually on the basis that they accept ACC’s decision without considering whether the decision was right. Even so, if ACC are getting it wrong in at least 25% of the cases they decline, then surely that is an unforgivable percentage of wrong decisions. If ACC did get it right in even just that 25% of cases, how much could we tax payers have saved in the unnecessary costs of taking these cases to review? In its present state the ACC system is a gold mine of litigation cases for lawyers and this was something that the whole scheme was supposed to prevent…ACC have now become the ones the little guy has to fight to get their rightful entitlements. I have seen cases where ACC’s got the decisions so wrong and after years of fighting and thousands in legal bills, claimants have won their rightful entitlements, in some cases being paid in excess of a million dollars (including interest) because ACC made blatantly bad decisions. One case I am aware of involved ACC declining medication worth approximately $40 per year, ACC used a barrister to fight this claim at a cost of some $30,000 plus dollars over a period of a year, in the end the claimant involved won the case and ACC had to pay for the medication….the cost involved in fighting such claims is anything but the ‘administrative efficiency’ that ACC are supposed to adhere to under the legislation. Of course this was also going down under a labour government too. It appears that which ever government is in power at any given time are content to allow the culture of wasteful litigation to carry on because they think it will save a few bucks. Also remember that for every wrong decision ACC makes, if only 10% of claimants challenge those decisions, then ACC are still saving big bucks, so maybe this is way a succession of governments sit back and allow the ACCs culture and practices to continue unabated. Meanwhile, genuinely injured people are being pushed onto invalids and sickness benefits because ACC won’t pay for the treatment/surgery/ERC they are entitled to.
Pushed on to be bashed by Bennett!
Boo well said.
I injured my wrist at work in October 2009. Doctors & Specialists couldn’t work out what was wrong at first because it turned out to be a combination of things with a number of symptoms. ACC covered me but then in March 2010 withdrew their support, saying I have a pre existing medical condition (before I got a confirmed diagnosis in April). I’m due to have surgery this month, then ACC review hearing in June. Lucky I have health insurance to pay surgery costs. Would like to hear from anyone who has been successful with their ACC review?
What are Labour going to do?
Since ACC legislation was implemented to prevent litigation and is now causing people to litigate against the actual scheme itself, it seems appropriate that right to sue should be reinstated. Why triangulate. Save taxpayers money. The scheme has become a scam for lawyers and another way for the government to stealth tax whilst failing to provide a service. Its an international joke – unsurprising everyone is heading to Oz.!
New Zealanders lost significant rights in losing the right to take a case to court, sue and settle. Instead, people are locked into a system which treats them like criminals, who receive threatening letters stating entitlement will be stopped for ‘non-compliance’ ie thats if you cant make one of the appointments and have to change. ACC is now an arm of the corrections department. Client, claimant or criminal? Little difference to ACC.
Private Insurance companies are money making institutions. If thats the direction the government are going, then people should have the right to opt out of ACC altogether. I’m sure the vast majority of people over 40 with degenerative changes will opt out one, especially if they have four motorbikes.!
UK have National Health Service, payments taken out at source of income and still retain the right to sue. Whatever anyone says, their system in a country of 68m works well. NZ has only 4.3m people and the government struggles to manage that.
ACC is not equitable. Hasn’t been for years. It was never instituted for people who broke a finger nail, but for those who had a genuine injury for which they could sue, irrespective of what age they were. If a filing cabinet falls on your head and breaks a bone, it does’nt matter that there is a small degree of degenerative change already going on, The cabinet broke the bone.
Spending millions on lawyers just to ensure that people don’t get a good hearing at Review is disgusting.
Who in Labour is going to actually man-up, stand up and actually LEAD? Who will be the voice of the people and stop this river of human misery. Whoever you are, the next election will be yours.