National must stop meddling with ACC before the election

A press release from the Green Party by Kevin Hague

The redesign currently occurring at the Accident Claims Corporation (ACC) for sensitive claims needs to be put on hold immediately, said the Green Party today.
The Green Party is concerned about work currently underway at ACC involving the sensitive claims service that could impact on the availability of clinical psychology treatment for victims of rape and sexual abuse as well as their privacy. The Green Party believes that ACC is instituting a new level of bureaucracy in order to farm out sensitive claims to private providers.
“Instituting major structural change into the way ACC delivers services to New Zealanders a few weeks out from a general election is unacceptable,” Green Party ACC spokesperson Kevin Hague said today.
“The new corporate insurance model that ACC is moving towards creates a new layer of bureaucracy that may enable companies to set up and profit from procuring the services of specialised psychologists.
“Private companies should not be able to turn a profit from the money intended to support the victims of sexual violence and abuse.
“ACC’s new model involves the creation of new, non-specialist ‘supplier’ entities who will tender for the provision of services with pre-existing treatment providers.
“Moving towards this model could result in non-specialised third parties handling extremely confidential information which is currently only held by the Sensitive Claims unit and select providers,” Mr Hague said.
“The supplier organisations do not need to be specialists in sexual violence services, but are entirely new organisations set up for nationwide competitive tendering. It is not clear that in the event of a breach of privacy or process who would be held to account.
“The sensitive claims redesign could result in a decline in the specialist workforce and undermine the provision of wrap around services.
“Any psychologists not signed up with a supplier or themselves becoming a supplier will be unable to provide ACC funded specialist claims services.
“The Government has missed the opportunity to redesign the sensitive claims pathway and fully implement the Disley report recommendations.”
The Disley report, released in 2012, suggested a wide range recommendations including improving communications with clients, refining ACC’s systems and processes, ensuring treatment and assessment is carried out by a well-qualified, fit-for-purpose workforce.
“National is choosing to push through major changes without properly consulting clients, advocates, psychologists or the public,” Mr Hague said.
“The new direction National is taking ACC lacks proper checks and balances.
“The Green Party will stop this attempt at privatisation of ACC by stealth.
"The Green Party has previously laid out a ten point plan for rehabilitating ACC and bring it back to the core principles it was founded on.”
Link to Green Party ACC plan: https://www.greens.org.nz/press-releases/acc-rehabilitation-plan-announced

© 2014 Scoop Media

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1408/S00211/national-must-stop-meddling-with-acc-before-the-election.htm

Opening up of ACC will not be rushed - Collins

A news report from Radio New Zealand

ACC Minister Judith Collins says progress on opening up ACC to the private sector is still being made.
In a speech on Thursday morning, Ms Collins also said the corporation's biggest current challenge is client privacy.
The previous ACC minister, Nick Smith, had already embarked upon the process of allowing private insurance companies to compete with ACC for workplace cover. He resigned last month after it was revealed he had written a reference for an ACC claimant while he was the minister.
Ms Collins, who took over the portfolio, told the Employers and Manufacturers' Association on Thursday that progress is being made, but the process will not be rushed.
She also talked about the recent controversies over the release of client information, saying they've understandably undermined public confidence in ACC. She said she's still not satisfied the corporation's privacy provisions are good enough, and the board is working to address that.
Meanwhile, Labour MPs Trevor Mallard and Andrew Little are sending Ms Collins a letter of response to her threat to proceed with defamation action. In separate letters they say they will not be offering an apology, nor will they be covering her legal costs.

© 2012 Radio New Zealand

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/103763/opening-up-of-acc-will-not-be-rushed-collins

Accident-prone ACC might face a red card too

An article from the Dominion Post by Dave Armstrong

When Nick Smith announced his local government reforms, it sparked robust debate. Newtown basil growers like me were horrified that funding for our local fire-eating festivals might be cut, yet many Kiwis looked forward to lower rates and a reduction in the bloated salaries of council chief executives.
But then we were distracted by two letters written by him on ministerial letterhead. We were far too busy watching Dr Smith going to Coventry to discuss anything else.
The Opposition flexed its muscles in a way I haven't seen for some time. Union heavy Andrew Little kicked off by calling for Mr Smith's resignation. Then Labour's Grant Robertson and Green MP Kevin Hague tag-teamed as they tackled National on the open and blindside flanks. Mr Robertson called Dr Smith "hopelessly conflicted", and Mr Hague asked some excellent questions about the present culture inside ACC.
Labour leader David Shearer stood at the back of the scrum  with Graham Mourie-like aloofness  overlooking proceedings. He did not immediately call for Dr Smith's resignation but wiffled that an inquiry might be needed. It was only late in the game that he waffled that perhaps Mr Smith should go.
But it was Winston Peters who was the real impact player. Using the protection of parliamentary privilege, he repeatedly eye-gouged the Government with a number of Loe blows, describing the saga of Dr Smith and his friend without ACC benefits as a "shabby case involving blackmail, sex, a minister with a conflict of interest". Now that's a sound bite.
Like any good captain, Prime Minister John Key refused to drop his player over a yellow card, but when a second letter was found, yellow turned to red. Then, and only then, Mr Key decided Dr Smith's behaviour was "sumply not a septible". In a brilliant display of obfuscation, he patiently explained to the waiting hack pack how the damning first letter did not constitute grounds for Smith to resign but the innocuous second letter did.
Nick Smith's blubbing resignation was not pretty. He's been in the place more than 20 years and, though accident-prone, was capable. During the Rena crisis, while surrounded by a swirling sea of incompetence, he stayed positively buoyant.
So will his resignation do any good? Though he had to go, I worry that the Right will use the debacle as an argument to privatise ACC. The organisation is not perfect, but as any Christchurch resident still waiting for the payout on their munted home will tell you, private insurance systems have more than their fair share of faults.
This sad case also smacked of old-fashioned, Tory privilege. There's little fuss when a poor person gets no help from ACC, but when a National Party apparatchik is treated shabbily, the heavy artillery is rolled out. Bronwyn Pullar turning up to a meeting with Michelle Boag as support reminds me of Frank Sinatra getting Ronald Reagan to sign his casino licence. Those ACC officials must have been terrified, knowing that hell hath no fury like the Boagy-woman scorned.
And how on Earth do you send an entire spreadsheet of names by mistake? I admit, a mate of mine occasionally texts me at midnight with requests like "hey babe, you feel like a hot visit" but that's because his girlfriend is right below me on the alphabetical address book of his cellphone. But sending 6000 confidential names containing highly sensitive information to someone with a known grievance with ACC is sumply not a septible.
ACC should be an organisation that helps all New Zealanders, regardless of their political connections. At present, it reminds me of Winz in the dim dark Christine Rankin days when the "clients" seemed to be treated like the enemy rather than people in genuine need.
ACC is a wonderful concept in theory, but those MPs calling for an inquiry are right. Questions need to be asked, and a robust inquiry might make the Accident Compensation Commission a little less accident prone.

© 2012 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/columnists/dave-armstrong/6634472/Accident-prone-ACC-might-face-a-red-card-too

Degenerative ACC

A post from Tumeke! by Bomber Bradbury

Why does this Government want to destroy ACC? National have been planning to privatize ACC all along, Merrill Lynch told the Australian Insurance Shark Industry that National’s privatization of ACC would be a $200 million bonanza for them in July of 2008, that was months before ‘Cullen’s hole’ was used as the excuse to privatize. The Pricewaterhouse Coopers report points out our ACC system works better than many other examples around the world.
From the beginning National have lied about their true intentions on ACC, the second Nick got the portfolio he was gagging ACC from talking at the select committee meeting which was trying to ascertain the truth of his claims that ACC was in the crises he painted and now National have decided to abuse sexual abuse survivors by forcing them to say they are mental before they can get any counseling. This is ideology before people and it’s appalling.

Click here to read more.

Claims are not skyrocketing, victims are not paramount – it’s privatisation time, baby

A blog entry from LudditeJourno

Now we understand why ACC has been pushing a clinical framework for providing counselling to survivors of sexual abuse which counsellors, survivors, and advocates working in the sexual violence sector say is unethical.
Why now?
The National government admits their plans investigate explicitly the privatisation of ACC.  Despite there being no economic need according to, well, economists.

Read the rest of this entry at http://ludditejourno.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/claims-are-not-skyrocketing-victims-are-not-paramount-its-privatisation-time-baby/

Compo scheme can still work without breaking the bank

An article from the New Zealand Herald by Tim Hazledine

How foolish is the kerfuffle about the alleged blowout in our Accident Compensation Corporation liabilities? This is how foolish.
Suppose you and your spouse are in charge of a family of, say, three young children. That means you are legally responsible for bringing them up to school leaving age and morally responsible for helping them in further training or education after that.
So how much is this going to cost you? A lot. Let's say $10,000 per child per year through their school years; possibly more later at polytech or university. You'd better also allow for some inflation of education costs, just to be on the safe side - and this is all about your children. You do want to be on the safe side, right? And then those unforeseeable contingencies - need a prudent margin there, too.
It all adds up to many hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenditures. And just how are you planning to pay for this?
Well, you have a job, you say. And your spouse will be back in the workforce in a few years after the kids all get into school.
But that's simply not good enough. You can't guarantee you won't lose your job, can you? And as for your spouse's posited future contribution - well, how do you know present skills won't be outdated when the time comes, requiring further expensive retraining? No, you have these locked-in cast-iron financial commitments.
You must match them with equally solid and secure income-earning assets.
You need to be able to show unencumbered funds of at least half a million dollars right now to guarantee the future income stream necessary to meet your obligations to your children.
And you haven't got that, have you? You've got about $20,000 in KiwiSaver accounts. You've a bit of equity in your house, but, hey, you can't bring up your children in a tent, can you? Let's face it. Strictly speaking, you are broke; busted; bankrupt. And so are several hundred thousand other New Zealand families just like you - billions of dollars of unfunded liabilities, in total.
It's the "biggest loss of any entity, public or private, in New Zealand history", to slightly paraphrase Dr Nick Smith on the $4.8 billion "loss" recorded last year by the ACC. If you think this is silly, then the ACC fracas is truly dumb. It's basically the same story writ large - the idea that future accident compensation payments are rigid "obligations" which have to be "pre-funded", as they say, along with some jiggery pokery with the projections of payouts and expenses. It's dumber because, of course, the Government's ability to raise revenue when needed is much more secure than any individual's future income, and also because, on the payment side, our ACC obligations are in fact rather more fluid than are the parents' obligations to do the best for their children.
So let's all be sensible about this. To me, the best thing about Sir Owen Woodhouse's great accident compensation scheme is the no-fault part - the removal, in most circumstances, of the right to sue for damages.
In America, in contrast, they've basically privatised the welfare state, with every man and his lawyer against every other man and his lawyer, in a contest for compensation from which the only long-term winners are the lawyers. We don't have that here now, thanks to ACC, and that's really good. We do have some problems with claims growth exceeding population growth. But we can deal with this if we aren't too squeamish about adjusting claim payouts to fit a total budget, which itself can be adjusted from year to year according to macroeconomic conditions.
We can have a pay-as-you go "Vote ACC" just as we have pay-as-you-go Vote Education and Vote Health in each year's budget. The key is to accept that accident compensation can only ever be a palliative, not a panacea.
Dr Smith's suggestion that a terminally ill person might choose to kill themselves to get the compo for their family may have been a bit tactless, but he actually has a point. ACC funds some things; not others. If accidents and suicides, why not illness? Why not compensation for marriage split-ups, which are apparently one of the most traumatic of all personal tragedies - possibly worse than losing a limb. No, enough already. The state can't compensate people in cash for all life's misadventures and it shouldn't try. We can help, but we can't make people whole again.
There are problems with ACC, but they very much depend on how the issues are framed. Truly, New Zealand can have a decent, efficient, state-run accident compensation system without breaking the bank.
Don't fret about it. Get back to figuring out how you are going to pay for bringing up those kids.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10604155&pnum=0