They are still looking for a real Green party to vote for.

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What about people who like the birds and the bees?

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jh

“That was a great protest (face masks) a lot of people will be disquieted by Key and Hydes judgement”

Hell yes, about 6.7% of the people in NZ will be up in arms, the rest will not give a toss.

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That was a great protest (face masks) a lot of people will be disquieted by Key and Hydes judgement.

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jh – key has ‘dirty work’ that needs to be done? Surely not!

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It looks as though Key is using Act to do its’ dirty work just as Clark used the Greens (S 59).

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I don’t see what you are talking about Kevyn.

Where did i make any claim’s about the US car insurance system please cite? or are you just pulling mis-quotes out of your arse.

[frog: sorry turnip28. You got automagically moderated by using Paul Henry's favourite word, "arse"]

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Turnip, For somebody living in the United States of America you seem to be wondrously uninformed about how car insurance works there. US insurance don’t classify people as bad drivers only if they have a history of crash claims but also if they have a speeding ticket. Fortunately market forces and judicial precedent have provided a solution to be labelled a “bad” driver simply because you got a speeding ticket. Exceeding a speed limit is a misdemeanor offence. Any entity that pays a fine for a misdemeanor is deemed to be the offender. Thus you can buy speeding ticket insurance which ensures that the fine is paid by the insurance company. For the pricely sum of $15 a month you can ensure that your car insurance company can’t hit you with a speeding offence “high risk” premium because your fine will be paid without you ever admitting legal liability for having committed the alleged speeding offence.

Incidently, car insurance is compulsory in most if not all states, and most insurance companies won’t pay out on a crash claim without sighting the police report form. That last requirement does give the USA the most complete and comprehensive crash database in the world, which allows crash involvement and crash severity to be studied exclusive of each other. That’s very important for working out the actual causes of fatal crashes, ie separating the cause of the crash fro the cause of the fatality.

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gerrit

re
>
About the same as when the state cant collect (increase) taxes and is unable to pay ACC claims.
>

Luckily the last CEO of ACC, Garry Wilson, managed to shift the corporation from this year’s revenue pays this year’s costs, to a scheme whereby ‘this year’s revenue pays for costs incurred this year’. In other words, there are six actuarially costed funds, each of which has to have enough reserve to pay for the future cost of current claims. (That’s putting it very simply – but a fair approximation I thimk.)

This means that as long as the regime Garry put in place remains, no one with an accepted claim will suffer down the road. THe rub is in sticking to that regime.

THis is why the comment by moralpanic above that
>”the supposedly scandalous deficit is merely 6.5% of the ACC operational budget
>

is about as misleading as any comment can be!
Firstly, the six finds have to look after themselves, not each other, and so the total annual operational budget is of no interest anyway.
Secondly, the operating budget of ACC is not the $15,384,615,000 it would have to be for $1 billion to be 6.5% of it.
Thirdly, that billion dollars has to be paid by the Tax Payer and given there are only about 2 million of us that’s another $500 I have to fork out to pay for the Labour Led Government’s ineptitude.

Why was this ineptitude? Simple! In Mr. Wilson the ACC had a leader who had a clear commercial backgroud, a reputation for equity and honesty (badly needed after the prior three CEOs) and took an extremely cautious approach to the way the corporation operated. During his tenure he radically changed, for the better, the way things worked there and was able to return many people to gainful work who had no future other than dependency on ACC’s funds. This reduction of the ‘tail’, as it was called, saved taxpayers, earners, employers and drivers billions of dollars.

Garry was replaced by a person who is a medical doctor, came from being CEO of a DHB, and clearly has no understanding of how insurance management really works. Her first action was to appoint a lawyer as COO. I wonder how much more trouble we are in thanks to this wonderful commercial combination!

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One last thing the ACC levy needs to be removed from petrol and the motor vehicle license fee. Each driver in NZ needs to carry roadside accident insurance coverage instead, good drivers pay less and bad drivers pay more.

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As far as private/public i don’t care so much, I do have a problem with a public system in that its possible for an industry to lobby(buy off) political parties in order to have their ACC premiums subsidised by other industries.

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2 things need to affect the premium an employer pays for ACC, 1 the industry and 2 the number of workplace accidents the employer occurs.

BJs argument of spreading that cost around is unfair (socialism) instead you need to reward the successful company (capitalism). If a factory has high ACC premium’s then it needs to implement safety protocols to reduce accidents in order to lower those premiums, it isn’t up to ACC to do this. The incentive lies with the factory owner, by spreading the risk around their is NO incentive (lack of incentives is why socialist systems never work)

Note unemployment insurance should work exactly the same way, except the premiums the company pays should be based on how many people you fire. If the company fires lots of people then it will pay more in unemployment insurance.

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toad,

About the same as when the state cant collect (increase) taxes and is unable to pay ACC claims.

Guess the state can always print more money.

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Oh, and another thought – what happens if a private personal injury insurer goes belly-up?

I suppose we get an AIG-style taxpayer funded bailout, or do all the claimants on their books just lose their entitlements?

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toad,

I dont think that the time period that competiton in accident insurance was allowed, was long enough to establish the claim frequency rejection.

I fact my employer at the time was going to ditch NZI as they had rejected a number of claims.

Competion might have changed the long term rejection rate downwards.

What I see at the moment is ACC being like WINZ where the staff are on bonusses to pay out as little as possible. And without competion that is going to remain so.

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Gerrit said: However having had OOS claims rejected by both NZI (when they had accident cover in that short time when competition was allowed) and ACC, I dont think either system is good as BOTH are based on denying claims.

I’m not saying ACC don’t do it too – I know that they do. What I’m saying is there is more incentive to do it in a competitive enviroment, and my experience is that it happened more frequently in 1999-2000 when there was a competitive environment.

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toad, Bj,

Take both points on board and agree with them.

However having had OOS claims rejected by both NZI (when they had accident cover in that short time when competition was allowed) and ACC, I dont think either system is good as BOTH are based on denying claims.

Waited for the public health system to provide a carpal tunnel operation for over four years.

Luckily Southern Cross wanted to change my cover plan and as an incentive wiped all previous conditions.

So had a 15 minute operation ($4000) on the private heath scheme.

Basically not a fan of either public or private accident insurance, however bat for the side of competition. Got to be better then a state monopoly.

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Good point BJ – that happened in 1999-2000 too. The private insurers took all the low risk business while the ACC subsidiary @work insurance ended up lumbered with the high risk high levy industries.

One thing that I think could get levies down would be making ACC responsible for workplace injury prevention. The current dichotomy with the Department of Labour responsible for this (funded by Government appropriation rather than ACC levies) doesn’t provide ACC with any mechanism to reduce industry risk and therefore levies.

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Gerrit

The problem with privatizing is that the private firms don’t HAVE to take on your risk. They’ll take all the office workers and stiff the industrialist with the workplace hazards… even if they only imagine the risks. The subdivided market then forces the levies higher on some and fails to spread the risk across all.

Is ACC inefficient? I doubt that it is as inefficient or as profitable as any large US Insuror.

I could be wrong but I don’t doubt that it’d be a close thing.

respectfully
BJ

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Hmmm – now not sure which Gerrit I am responding to!

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