Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, October 29th, 2008 - 46 comments
Categories: ACC, act, election 2008, greens, health, labour, national, progressives, united future, workers' rights -
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If you vote National, United Future, or ACT, you will be voting for the ACC system to be privatised. Consequences of this include:
- $200 million in profits flowing offshore, according to John Key’s former employers Merril Lynch
- higher levies on most workers, as private insurers cherry-pick the most profitable for themselves, leaving the rest to be carried by the public insurer
- currently, the work account subsidises accidents that fall under other accounts. Privatisation will mean these claims have to be funded entirely from tax and other levies like car registration.
- less certain coverage. Private insurers make their money by not paying out claims
- less money for accident prevention. As a monopoly, ACC benefits from accident prevented, so it invests heavily in accident prevention. Private insurers would only have a fraction of the market each, so would only receive a fraction of the benefit from investment in accident reduction. A ‘tragedy of the commons’-type situation.
- more complexity in changing jobs. Different employers will have different insurers, changing obs will require changing insurer.
- getting a job may be more difficult if you are more likely to have an accident if that means higher levies for your prospective employer, eg if you are a young male or overweight.
- private insurance increases the administrative burden for healthcare providers.
- private insurers will try to minimise payouts and force other insurers to make the payouts instead. These boundary issues lead to more court cases. This type of personal injury litigation has choked the US court system.
-if your insurance company collapses when you have an ongoing claim, what will happen to your payments?
If you vote Labour, Green, Progressive (and, presumably, Maori), you will be voting to keep ACC in public ownership and this world-leading system intact. By moving out the point when the pubic system takes over liability for accidents that were covered by private insurers during the brief privatisation period in the 1990s, Labour will reduce the cost of ACC, allowing employer levies and car registration to drop 20% from next year.
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Scoopit!
Steve P.
Sorry can you re-post the shit you wrote after that – I switched off when you claimed to know more about my thoughts than I do.
burt: not about your thoughts – your opinions and beliefs are your own. Steve claimed to know more than you do about what you claim to know about. Those are matters of fact or law or policy about which the truth can be determined by rational means – so I suggest you state your claim as to why he’s wrong or concede.
You could also try rebutting some of my arguments, which you’ve conveniently ignored once your position has become untenable.
Come on, burt, you can do better.
L
burt. I studied tort, especially the tort of negligence, and ACC. So far, your depth of knowledge has been exemplified by mixing up the WCA and ACC, and not understanding what purpose suing serves.
burt
It’s NOT shit! It is in fact the reason that ACC is as good as it is, and why it is such a damn good system, and why National are incredibly stupid to be even contemplating playing around with it. We as a country overwhelmingly rejected the National amendments to ACC in 1999. You might recall the overwhelming response to the sad state of ACC prior to National loosing control of the govt then. If you were to take off your eye patch for just a while you might see that most people in this country are perfectly happy with ACC as it is now. Yes there are one or two gliches, sometimes it takes a little while for things to grind round, and there are times when accidents don’t seem to be compensated as one might hope. But on the whole if you are unfortunate enough to suffer an accident in NZ you can be pretty sure that the system will provide treatment and pretty quickly. Not only that if you suffer an ongoing disability you can expect on going assistance. I have a friend who fell off her deck and broke her back. Her house is being refitted for her needs as a paraplegic she is living in a hotel while this is done, and there will be ongoing provision of care. Frankly I don’t see this sort of provision being provided by private providers.
Lew
I have had a read your posts above and essentially the only thing I disagree with is how we deliver a minimum level of cover for everybody. I don’t think a one size fits all model is the answer. I’m however all for (along with allowing private insurers into the frame) having a set govt premium much like today. General cover much like today. You can even call it ACC. Having tax deductible private insurance premiums changes the scene considerably. Same for health care & schooling. If we look at other growing economies this is generally one of the elements of how they manage the greater social good without being prescriptive in the delivery.
Perhaps we could discuss compulsory third party motor vehicle insurance instead of ACC, I think it’s the same concept as ACC. Unless you think that all motor vehicle third party insurance must move solely to a state monopoly we can continue to debate this without the emotion that ACC seems to muster.
Now onto Steve P. – Deep breath and start a new comment.
Steve P.
In your haste you completely stampeded through what I was saying to Janet and grabbed something you could bat me with. Great.
Do you think I’m really confused about the WCA from 1900 and ACC today? Janet said “ACC was set up by politicians who agreed they never wanted people to have to fight for accident or injury support again. We dishonour them by dismantling it.”.
The question is Steve, who are we dishonoring? How have they already been dishonored by the changing implementations and iterations of ACC? How have they been dishonoured by the proliferation of it’s collection points? It’s subtle but steady slippage to user pays and the general lack of it’s transparency to the consumer today?
The initial system was honorable, I agree with Janet on that. Is it still an appropriate solution 108 years later – I’m not so sure.
burt. ACC has not been around 108 years. The WCA and ACC are not the same thing, one is not merely an evolution of the other.
burt
Private providers will never be able to deliver a system as good as we have now – end of story. Why? Because they will be looking to rip $200 million a year out of it in profit. Not my figures – but good ol JK’s mates at ML.
Steve
Yes I’m onto the fact one is an Act and the other is an monopoly govt administration backed by an series of Act’s. That’s not problematic for me Steve. Did you visit the link I provided? It was a ‘History of ACC’ from the ACC website. ACC kinda say they evolved from the WCA?
Macro
Yes yes, it’s all about John Key right now today. New policies that might stand for decades must be made up right now to stop him. His policies are evil, change is bad.
You keep up the good fight, lets ignore what actually might work and might not and lets just have the status quo – yeah yeah yeah.
“By moving out the point when the pubic system takes over liability for accidents that were covered by private insurers during the brief privatisation period in the 1990s, Labour will reduce the cost of ACC, allowing employer levies and car registration to drop 20% from next year.”
Labour, in other words, will do smoke and mirrors or make someone else pay for an election promise, as has been done in the past with ACC. There is no free lunch.