As I said: Fair warning

[p.dath]

So they'll provide more for less and still deliver a profit for their shareholders? 'cus everything that operates in a market get cheaper, just ask Max Bradford!

Yes, most definitely - some will provide more for less. And you want to know why?
Because they can target low risk individuals - just like insurance does now.

For example, if you want full car insurance now, are 18, you'll pay a lot than someone who is 30 with a clean record.
That's because these two different sectors have a different risk profile. And commercial profit orientated companies will adjust to this - to maximise their profit.

In the same way if ACC is privatised - those low risk individuals would pay less, and those high risk would pay more - as it should be.

[p.dath]

Anything that is COMPULSORY to pay for, al a electricity, rates, taxes should be provided by the government. The overwhelming desire within the private sector to "maximise the shareholder value" does not mesh well with utilities and taxes.
...

I'll agree - their are some cases of privatisation that haven't worked as well as the public would have liked.

But that does not mean anything that is compulsory to pay should be done by the Government.

Shall we abolish funeral parlours, and only allow Government ones - because we all have to pay when we die?

Shall we abolish private hospitals because when we urgently need medical treatment, and the public system can't supply it in a timely manner, and you have to pay for it? Or is it that reason private hospitals exist because the Government fails to provide a system that we have to pay for that does the job?
ps. Have had two relatives die waiting for treatment for cancer in public Hospitals. Both of them might be alive today if they had gone to a private hospital, but their misplaced faith in the public system resulted in their preventable deaths.


Shall I suggest that their exists both a need for public and private enterprise. At that in both cases their are good and bad examples of their success.

[slofox]

I heard a couple of people discussing this last week - these are people who provide Psychological services to "sensitive cases" on ACC.

Relevant bit is this: ACC's internal costs are EIGHT TIMES what they pay the therapists. EIGHT TIMES! In other words, 88% of the cost of providing sensitive case services is sucked up internally by ACC itself..

No wonder they got a friggin budget blowout...

[Grahameeboy]

Because they have to compete in a very limited market. Given the choice between TP and no insurance, my gut feeling is that an awful lot of people skip insurance to buy a bigger intercooler.

As SOON as it is compulsory premiums will sky rocket. It's disingenuous to believe otherwise, ESPECIALLY if you work IN the Insurance industry.

One problem for Insurer's is uninsured drivers so if Insurance is made compulsory then this will not be an issue so does not mean that premiums will sky rocket...

[Kickaha]

One problem for Insurer's is uninsured drivers so if Insurance is made compulsory then this will not be an issue so does not mean that premiums will sky rocket...

Would you like to put a wager on that?

[jono035]

here is a good example of stupidity that we are paying for...

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-sto...r-car-surfing/

ACC will cover the costs of any of his injuiries wil it not... but why should they

Compared to what? If he had private health insurance then either it would come out of the pool of what other people had available or it would be on him.

Do you honestly think that he was likely to have thought 'oh, hey, I better not get on this van roof, if something happens to me then I'll have a massive medical bill!'? I doubt it. If people are going to do stupid shit like that anyway, then why go out of your way to try ruin someones life because of a bad call...

And none of that speaks to the issue of where you draw the line as to what is covered and what isn't, which I feel is the more important issue.

Edit: Also, what seems stupid and dangerous to you, may not seem so to others. There are many people who think that because you ride a motorcycle you're already either suicidal or mentally deficient... It is far too easy to condemn a nameless person to a life of crushing debt because of a stupid risk he took once, can you honestly say you've never done anything remotely like that? Would you feel the same if it was your brother, close friend or son who had been involved?

[James Deuce]

One problem for Insurer's is uninsured drivers so if Insurance is made compulsory then this will not be an issue so does not mean that premiums will sky rocket...

That would go against the experience of every country that has introduced compulsory TP insurance and then allowed private companies to compete for business.

I still don't understand what Mr Dath is getting at either. Some people won't be sold insurance because they are high risk. They'll still drive and they won't pay their fines.

[Brian d marge]

what will it take for Nz to get off its arse and say enough?

for years I have watched Joe plumber getting reamed , This latest round of reaming is going to smart a bit

I think NZ has been told to cut costs and rein in its Debt , do is looking at every possibility

Life is for enjoying , not beiing reamed by a enraged gorilla

Leave NZ , live in another country , My health care , dental , Glasses are cheap and easy to get

I when to the dentist the other day to get a filling done , try $20 for a check , clean and fill

Something s are a little expensive like Rego and WOF $ 550 for two years

oh and I only work for four hours a day , which leaves the rest of the day for the kids

Stay and do something about the reaming , or leave ....and the pain stops


Stephen

[Swoop]

Relevant bit is this: ACC's internal costs are EIGHT TIMES what they pay the therapists. EIGHT TIMES! In other words, 88% of the cost of providing sensitive case services is sucked up internally by ACC itself..

No wonder they got a friggin budget blowout...

No revelation there. I bet it is fairly standard for any gubbinment organisation. They do not live or operate in the real world, with the rest of us.
Remember that the number of public servant's bloated up over the last 9 years...

[Clockwork]

Yes, most definitely - some will provide more for less. And you want to know why?
Because they can target low risk individuals - just like insurance does now.

For example, if you want full car insurance now, are 18, you'll pay a lot than someone who is 30 with a clean record.
That's because these two different sectors have a different risk profile. And commercial profit orientated companies will adjust to this - to maximise their profit.

In the same way if ACC is privatised - those low risk individuals would pay less, and those high risk would pay more - as it should be.

If you take that approach to its logical end, everyone should self insure. ie just not have insurance at all, then we can all be solely responsible for funding our own lifestyles.

I'll agree - their are some cases of privatisation that haven't worked as well as the public would have liked.

But that does not mean anything that is compulsory to pay should be done by the Government.

Shall we abolish funeral parlours, and only allow Government ones - because we all have to pay when we die?

You think funeral parlours offer the consumer value for money!! Have you paid for a funeral lately?

[jono035]

No revelation there. I bet it is fairly standard for any gubbinment organisation. They do not live or operate in the real world, with the rest of us.
Remember that the number of public servant's bloated up over the last 9 years...

Yeah, but surely this means that we need to decrease the amount of beauracracy involved in the processes and institute enough transparency that it stays out, rather than saying 'well, that didn't work, lets privatise it!'...

Seems to me like another one of these situations where everyone thinks the answer is either black or white when the situation is actually a subtle shade of grey...

Maybe privatisation could work if it was regulated enough, maybe public could work if the beauracracy was kept in check...

[Genestho]

The no fault system needs reviewing and changed IMO.

Also, I bought shares in a company back in 2000, which I still have invested, last year or the year prior I noticed with interest that ACC bought 250 thousand units in this company.

Last years those units dived by more than half. (I'm too scared to see where they are at now!)
How much investing has been done and lost eh?

[Brian d marge]

I just realised

Posted on this site is a survey of Kiwi riders , and according to that survey, you are all over forty , have a house , and the kids are on the way out and have disposable income

you lot aint going to change a thing

Hurry up and pass on so I can move back and make it more livable

COME ON

do your bit for the better good of the country ,,,,

Stephen

[SPman]

ACC fees...rant rant....fucking labour gubbmint...rant...foam...rave..Helen Clarke....privatise the only way....foam....rant....dribble............
bloated gubbmint companies....slaver....feckin labour .......foam.. pant.. howl......

It all sounds so boringly familiar...

Australian Insurance companies are looking to make $200m when National privatises the ACC - which is what their intention is and always has been. And they'll make the books look as bad as they can by whatever means they can to acheive this.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10561167&pnum=0 link not working - text below

http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=910

It's still a better system than most around the world, but, what would I know......

[SPman]

Brian Fallow: ACC hostage to a changing world

NZ Herald Thursday Mar 12, 2009

For the Government to wrap legitimate concerns about slippage in ACC's performance in a whole lot of shrill scaremongering and scapegoating is gratuitous.
Indeed it is downright irresponsible when talking about the scheme to use terms like "insolvent" and "going down the gurgler" - even if the context is counterfactual - because there are people who depend on it to keep body and soul together and will do for the rest of their days.
The Accident Compensation Corporation is one of the largest financial organisations in the country with revenues and outgoings running into billions of dollars. Its finances are correspondingly complex.
Its actuaries, PricewaterhouseCoopers, estimate its liabilities as at next June 30 will be $21.9 billion, which is $2.6 billion higher than they thought they would be back in June last year.
Its reserve assets by contrast are around $10 billion and like other investors it is not immune to what has been happening on financial markets worldwide.


Its record as a fund manager is impressive, however. It managed a $187 million gain - yes, gain - for the six months to December 2008 and over the past 16 years it has outperformed its market benchmark indices by an average of 1.5 percentage points a year.
Nevertheless, ACC Minister Nick Smith said last week that if it were an insurance company it would be insolvent.
It is not a commercial insurer, of course, and most of the gap between its assets and its liabilities arises from the fact that it is only part-way through a process of transition from a pay-as-you-go scheme to a fully funded one.
As the law stands the scheme has to be fully funded by 2014.
ACC's briefing to the incoming minister last year notes that upward pressure on levies would be reduced if the date were pushed back to 2019, or if it were allowed to continue indefinitely as a partly funded scheme, with only new injuries fully funded.
Labour ACC spokesman David Parker has a private member's bill in the ballot to push the date out to 2019 and Nick Smith has indicated he supports that approach too. That will help.
Most of the recent increase in the fund's liabilities, however, has nothing to do with the way ACC is run.
Rather it reflects the parlous state of the world economy and the resulting steep drop in the discount rate, the assumed interest rate used to put a net present value on the scheme's future obligations.
As soon as an injury occurs the lifetime costs of that injury accrue. Conceptually the exercise of annually revaluing the liabilities is simple enough. It is to answer the question: how much money would you need to set aside in a bank account to cover the lifetime costs arising from existing injuries and the coming year's projected injuries?
In practice it is very demanding task. The answer depends on all sorts of things, including how many injuries occur, how much it costs to treat them, how long people stay on ACC and what happens to wages growth.
A key variable is interest rates. The lower rates are the larger the notional lump sum needed to fund the required cash outgoings will be. And lately they have dropped with a thud.
In the actuaries' latest estimate the steep drop in interest rates, all along the yield curve but especially at the short end, has alone added $1.6 billion to the liability - more than half the overall increase.
Together with other changes in economic assumptions, including the outlook for economic growth and wage inflation, it accounts for 71 per cent of the latest "blowout" in liabilities the politicians are wringing their hands over.
Given the prodigious sum governments around the world are borrowing it is a racing certainty interest rates will climb - and the seesaw effect on the net present
value of ACC liabilities will be downward.
It is also specious to assume that the current level of interest rates will continue when projecting the outlook for levies in the earners' account and conclude that they would need to treble to 4 per cent of gross wages by 2014. "There go your tax cuts!"
But fluctuations in the discount rate are only part of the blowout story.
Blow that political froth away and there is still some honest-to-goodness beer beneath.
The briefing to the incoming minister highlights three troubling trends.
One is in the number of claims. In the 2007-08 year claims rose 4 per cent when the population grew only 1 per cent.
In the case of workplace accidents alone the number of claims per million hours worked has increased by 15.6 per cent over the past four years, and is now at the same rate as Australia (where the trend has been declining).
Secondly the proportion of claimants who return to work has been trending down, from 93 per cent in 2001 to 87 per cent six years later.
And the combined effect of more claims and high rates of inflation in the health industry have pushed ACC's overall cost of medical treatment up an arresting 55 per cent in the three years to June 2008.
The Department of Labour's most recent quarterly report card on ACC says: "The three-month rehabilitation rate, return-to-work rate and long-term claims pool are continuing to show negative results, indicating clients are staying on the scheme longer, thus increasing outstanding liabilities, particularly weekly compensation."
But the board, in a letter to the minister objecting to being muzzled, argues that most of the $9.2 billion increase in the scheme's reported liabilities over the past three years was beyond its control.
In addition to the effect of lower interest rates ($1.45 billion) there was a $2.45 billion increase in the reported liability because of a change in accounting standards which required a higher risk margin.
"The underlying situation is not worse, it is just reported differently," now-ousted chairman Ross Wilson wrote.
Another $200 million was the result of court rulings (about asbestos) and legislative changes to increase the scheme's coverage, on top of $600 million in Cabinet-approved policy decisions.
"Of the total only 20 per cent is able to be influenced by the board through operational programmes and interventions," he said.
"The previous Government wanted to increase ACC benefits take-up and coverage. Now the new Government wants greater cost control."
The shift in focus is fair enough.
But ACC is a civilised and cost-effective approach to dealing with the injured. Why undermine confidence in the scheme, unless you plan to undermine the scheme itself?