Nats push ahead with ACC privatisation agenda

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, November 8th, 2010 - 22 comments
Categories: ACC, privatisation, spin - Tags:

The Government is planning to reduce ACC cover and portray it as a cost saving for levy-payers. You would get less income coverage when injured and have to endure a longer wait time of three weeks until your coverage would begin. Levies would be personalised on the private model. This is privatising ACC on bite at a time.

Any ‘savings’ from your ACC bill will be purely illusionary. The costs to the individual and to society don’t disappear just because ACC stops paying them. Instead of getting cover through ACC levies, you’ll have to purchase it privately (at greater cost) or hope to be able to cover any expenses out of pocket.

You can see how this amounts to the partial privatisation of ACC – costs that are now met publicly via ACC may in future have to be met by families going to the private insurance market, and paying the foreign insurers’ profits.

22 comments on “Nats push ahead with ACC privatisation agenda ”

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  1. infused 1
    8 November 2010 at 11:20 am

    “These reduced benefits could include a 10 percent cut in compensation for lost income after a less serious injury and lower levies in return for a longer wait period for lost income compensation, from a week to perhaps three weeks.

    It also suggested a discount for earners who did not make injury claims for a set time, while those who had a number of claims might be charged more.

    …

    The document also suggested levies being tailored to an individual’s own injury risk. Examples it suggested included a higher levy for someone if they had more injuries due to a sport they played. ”

    What’s the problem again?

    • Bright Red 1.1
      8 November 2010 at 11:49 am

      professional sports people already pay higher acc. this suggestion is that if you play amatuer sport you’ll face higher ACC. Not sure how that meshes with tackling the obesity epidemic.

      “These reduced benefits could include a 10 percent cut in compensation for lost income after a less serious injury and lower levies in return for a longer wait period for lost income compensation, from a week to perhaps three weeks.”

      the costs here don’t disappear, they’re just transferred to the accident victim.

      “It also suggested a discount for earners who did not make injury claims for a set time, while those who had a number of claims might be charged more. ”

      that’s the private model, readying ACC for privatisation. the problem is that it removes the social aspect – it says you get punished if you are unluck enough to have a series of accidents. makes sense for a profit-making company but isn’t consistant with the notion that ACC is built on: that society should allow accident victims to be left out of pocket.

  2. JJ 2
    8 November 2010 at 12:08 pm

    PAAAARAAAAAAAAAANOOOOOIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAA

  3. Draco T Bastard 3
    8 November 2010 at 1:01 pm

    It’s National and ACT making a well functioning government department badly functioning so as to get the people to agree to sell it. We just have to keep pointing to the simple fact that it was the best system in the world before NACT got in to power and that they’ve systematically undermined it since.

    • Bored 3.1
      8 November 2010 at 3:17 pm

      It is actually bloody funny to think of the wonderful world of insurance companies, those same people who are intimately involved with the finance and banking industries…those same creeps who have taken the world economy out with the recent “bubble”…and for their reward for such magnificent marshalling of the world of finance we have not only bailed them out but will now reward with them by entrusting to them our joint insurance for accidents. Yet another joke foisted on us by NACT.

      • Descendant Of Smith 3.1.1
        8 November 2010 at 3:40 pm

        Can’t have the public playing sport – they are needed to work for low wages in our low paid jobs. how dare they want some leisure time and want to do something with it.

        Three weeks without money – no doubt the victims of such a change will be queuing up at Work and Income for help – cost shifting at it’s finest.

        Currently the one week stand-down period for benefits is aligned to the week one stand-down for ACC – i.e. you are supposed to make your own provision for the first week. This alignment is simple and consistent. Lets complicate it.

        And of course the biggest impact will be on the low paid – those who can least afford to make provision for three weeks without any income. Yet another policy that won’t affect the well paid significantly.

  4. jbanks 4
    8 November 2010 at 4:20 pm

    “The Government is planning to reduce ACC cover and portray it as a cost saving for levy-payers.”

    Having no-claims benefits is a superb move. Myself and the majority of the voting public are sick of being financially responsible for the irresponsible.

    • Bright Red 4.1
      8 November 2010 at 4:24 pm

      how are people who have accidents financially irresponsible?

      • jbanks 4.1.1
        8 November 2010 at 4:37 pm

        For a start, look at motor-accident statistics and get back to me with any trends related to young and/or drunk people.

    • Bright Red 4.2
      8 November 2010 at 4:25 pm

      please provide polling evidence that the majority of voters are sick of ACC.

    • Bored 4.3
      8 November 2010 at 4:26 pm

      I am absolutley certain that people really want to injure themselves Banksy, its a fact that they go out of their way to hurt themselves, deliberately just to get ACC.

      (PS I use “fact” the same way the National Party spin machine does, so it is “true” and needs no substantiation).

    • Descendant Of Smith 4.4
      8 November 2010 at 6:10 pm

      I’m sick of irresponsible employers who don’t provide safe working conditions, who overwork staff and if they are injured at work simply say piss off we’ve got no job for you any more.

      My wife was the victim of one such employer and has a permanent disability, including life long pain, as a result of the work related injury she suffered.

      I still wouldn’t support bringing back the right to sue because all the evidence points to ACC being the simplest, most cost effective system.

      • Lanthanide 4.4.1
        8 November 2010 at 10:56 pm

        I think ACC should be able to sue companies, if they think it is warranted. Otherwise there will always be those that don’t learn the lesson about public health unless it hurts them.

    • handle 4.5
      10 November 2010 at 2:49 pm

      It’s called social insurance. That is not the same as private insurance which is the only model the Minister and his cronies seem to understand. Sharing responsiblity for everyone’s cover at the lowest overall cost means we gave up more tightly enforcing individual responsibility by suing and so forth. That was the deal the Woodhouse Commission brokered in 1967.

      Now these clowns are undermining it, just like the last government did when they kept the future provision funding arrangement in place that makes it easier to privatise the scheme and for the government to claim it is going broke.

      Only a public ignorant of the reasons why this world-leading scheme was set up in the first place and who have forgotten what happened last time these same twits privatised part of it in 1999 could be clamouring to dump it.

  5. tc 5
    8 November 2010 at 4:42 pm

    Looking forward to the MSM being totally sucked in by the gov’t spin and adopting the lapdog line of “…..the minister said so so he must be telling the truth…” that’s good enough for them which is a position they set for themselves being unable to decontsruct the original con of ACC being broke.

    That would be the ever reliable, trustworthy and honest Dr Nick Smith….a persona based on the simpsons Dr Nick Riviera

    • burt 5.1
      8 November 2010 at 5:16 pm

      the minister said so so he must be telling the truth…”

      What have Peters & Clark got to do with this ?

  6. Jeremy Harris 6
    8 November 2010 at 6:26 pm

    To say this is a move towards privatisation is a joke…

    When they open ACC up to competition it’ll be a move towards privatisation…

    • felix 6.1
      9 November 2010 at 12:34 am

      What you mean to say is “it’s not the penultimate move to what I define as a state of privatisation.”

      But it’s still a move toward privatisation whichever way you cut it Jeremy.

      What you’re implicitly recommending is meekly accepting every change and then complaining about it after the fact.

  7. Ed 7
    8 November 2010 at 11:59 pm

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10685770

    As well as an article, it has a survey asking:
    Would you support a proposal to pay lower ACC levies in exchange for reduced service?

    Last time I looked 64% said No.
    (I don’t know if the survey has closed, but it does indicate that some at least are starting to be suspicious of National tinkering with benefits)

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