ACC clusterfuck

[cyc]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10810873

Are these idiots that short of work? You would have thought after numerous recent privacy-related fuck ups they would, you know, get a grip and focus on that. Oh no. After the police and presumably the Crown Solicitors found that Pullar had made no threats ("no offence has been disclosed"), the wise thing to do is, at a minimum, shut up and go away.*

WE CONSIDERED THAT A THREAT HAD BEEN MADE! Who cares what your staff "considered"? There was either a threat or there wasn't -- independent parties are saying there wasn't. Stop embarrassing yourself.


* The decent thing to do would be to apologise to Pullar but that's too much to ask of ACC.

[Ab]

Yep, ACC seems to be staffed by devotees of the "if in hole, dig faster!" philosophy.

[cyc]

Originally Posted by Ab

Yep, ACC seems to be staffed by devotees of the "if in hole, dig faster!" philosophy.

Almost. It's "if in a hole, dig faster and pretend that you're going to find old at the bottom of the pit!".

[CCS]

Public servants.

[plaz0r]

Originally Posted by CCS

Public servants.

[Ab]

Have the public servitards in question misled the Minister then? Making Collins look bad does not strike me as a great idea.

[fixed_truth]

lol at waiting months to make a complaint to the police. Coincidentally just after the whole thing blew up in the media.

ps . . .

[cyc]

Another breach:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10811664

A High Court decision handed down by Justice Young late last month reveals ACC had to take legal steps to prevent a man publicly releasing another person's case notes the corporation had sent him in error.

Sack the management and board already.

[cyc]

Caught out stone cold lying in relation to the so called "threat" issue and for telling another lie to Pullar.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10812163

She and her friend Michelle Boag, a former National Party president who has supported her throughout the wrangle, hit out at claims by the corporation that Ms Pullar had threatened to use the private information of almost 7000 ACC claimants to help further her own ACC claim.

The information was accidentally emailed to Ms Pullar last August by the corporation.

In a meeting held four months later, ACC staff accused Ms Pullar of trying to use the information as leverage for financial gain.

But Ms Pullar - who attended the meeting with Ms Boag as her support person - secretly taped the encounter.

Last night, TV3's 60 Minutes interviewed Ms Pullar and played part of the recording showing she made no such threat. The link between the accidentally released information and its possible use by Ms Pullar in the media was made by one of two ACC staff members in the meeting.

"The fact is the meeting was totally about getting Bronwyn back to work,'' Ms Boag told TV3. "It was nothing to do with [getting more money from] ACC.''

There's no way that TV3 would be dumb enough to air Pullar's story and to suggest that there was no threat made unless the whole tape was that way. Time for to cops to investigate and hopefully charge the ACC people involved for making a false complaint. This revelation and the continuing lack of action in terms of a clean out of ACC is just shameful.

[StN]

Originally Posted by StN back in March...

Is it too tinfoil hatty to think that the drama that ACC is dealing with here has the obvious solution of "Well, let's privatise it then!"..?

[Golden Teapot]

Yep that's tin-foil hat stuff. What you're not aware of is what the big insurance companies thought of the basis National suggested a private market could be formed. It was a "you have to be joking" conversation.

Given that benefits are defined in law and that preventing accidents and aggressively providing care both benefit ACC insureds and the insurance company I just can't understand what precipitates the fear of privatization except perhaps the abject stupidity of those opposed who refuse to understand the motivations and needs of all parties. No private insurer would tolerate delaying treatment nor allowing an employer to have lapse safety - both cost too much money.

A state insurer on the other hand is staffed by people who on the whole do not care enough about patient and policyholder outcomes. It's okay to have lapse safety and for it to take ages to treat patients since both of these allow ACC to get bigger and if ACC runs out of money it just tells the government to raise levies and everyone has to pay.

The only real question is whether the profit a private insurer would require exceeds the human cost of the inefficiency of a state insurer. Profit is less than 5% of the premium and to me this seems like a tiny cost.

The proof of what happens could be taken from what did happen in the year opened to competition. Employers were forced by insurance companies to introduce work place safety schemes or to pay extremely high premiums. Patients received care much faster than had occurred under ACC.

ACC itself had to engage in a performance improvement programme and in fact eventually got to Silver under Baldrige. It's a pitty they didn't think to do this beforehand and it's a pitty they have since abandoned trying to improve.

[doppelgänger of someone]

While we are putting on the tin foil hats, isn't the point when ACC starts going to real shitter for Pullar is after 2008 when National starts squeezing ACC? Isn't it National that said too many "healthy" people are with ACC?

I think privatisation and providing competition are two different issues. I've always supported opening the market currently monopolised by ACC to private sector, i.e. private insurers should be able to offer accident insurances along with ACC.

However strictly privatising ACC won't solve problem cases like Pullar, when people need ACC money but weren't given. Strictly privatising ACC could make cases like Pullar even worse as long as ACC is a monopoly, because who else can they go to? Proper competition breeds efficiency, not simple privatisation.

After opening accident insurance to competition, whether to further privatise ACC I think is an open question. Compared with e.g. energy retail market or banking, where state-own player can give the private players a run for their money, there is no obvious reason to further privatise ACC.

[Golden Teapot]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger of someone

... there is no obvious reason to further privatise ACC.

For an insurance company to credibly be able to deliver upon the promises it makes it needs to hold an amount of money beyond the premium collected just in case experience unwinds less favourably than expected.

For the type of insurance ACC is writing this is a very significant sum of money. If the state's involvement in ACC reduces then a large sum of money is released for investment in other activities. This release of funds is essentially what National is targeting.

[doppelgänger of someone]

I'm not against privatisation per se, if the price is right and it would benefit consumers. What I'm against is pushing everything all at once. First liberalise accident insurance market, wait a few years and make sure the market is functioning properly. Then look at whether to privatise ACC completely.

If National want to fill the holes in the book, maybe they should just roll back the tax cut or raise new revenue like a capital gains tax (done right, not Labour's version) instead of selling assets that the general public aren't particularly keen on.

[Golden Teapot]

ACC is a lot of money fast and with very little risk of anything going wrong - bear in mind outcomes are very highly likely to improve.

I'd like to see a proper capital gains tax too - being a tax on every capital gain say with an administrative cut off to stop the inefficiency of collecting trivial amounts of tax.

I'm very against increased PAYE - it's time that everyone actually paid some tax and not just financially successful workers. It is an absurdity that home owners who pay no income tax at all (for practical purposes) can go ahead and make hundreds of thousands in tax free gains - these folk surely can afford to contribute to the tax take just like those that do.

[madmaxii]

Judge has gone.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10812496

[cyc]

The CEO and the upper management should be next.

[adonis]

Originally Posted by Golden Teapot

For an insurance company to credibly be able to deliver upon the promises it makes it needs to hold an amount of money beyond the premium collected just in case experience unwinds less favourably than expected.

For the type of insurance ACC is writing this is a very significant sum of money. If the state's involvement in ACC reduces then a large sum of money is released for investment in other activities. This release of funds is essentially what National is targeting.

Other activities meaning something other than insurance I suppose? Which means less coverage. Or do you mean more private insurance? As usual you provide stupid reasoning. Insurance should is a type of social safety net, the private sector already dominates too much of the industry.

[madmaxii]

GT's reasoning is normally pretty well thought out. Unlike your partisan political responses.

[cyc]

Originally Posted by madmaxii

GT's reasoning is normally pretty well thought out. Unlike your partisan political responses.

[fixed_truth]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger of someone

I'm not against privatisation per se, if the price is right and it would benefit consumers. What I'm against is pushing everything all at once. First liberalise accident insurance market, wait a few years and make sure the market is functioning properly. Then look at whether to privatise ACC completely.

Given that Labour said last year that it will reverse Nationals (proposed) changes to allow competition; would it be that profitable for private insurers to (briefly) enter the market?

[fixed_truth]

ie like last time

The previous National government allowed private insurers to compete from July 1999 in the workers compensation market alongside government insurer @Work.

There were considerable set-up costs, but investments in systems "were of no use" once Labour reversed the privatisation policy, the report says.

[CCS]

Originally Posted by adonis

Insurance should is a type of social safety net

wat?

the private sector already dominates too much of the industry.

The alternative is...?

[adonis]

Originally Posted by adonis

Insurance should be viewed as a type of social safety net

Fixed after a slight brain freeze.

[adonis]

Originally Posted by madmaxii

GT's reasoning is normally pretty well thought out. Unlike your partisan political responses.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

in politics, a partisan is a committed member of a political party.

Who do you think fits this description more than Golden "Labour is evil, National are saintly" Teapot? I'm a fucking anarchist, I'm about as anti-partisan as it gets. The problem is the right's solution to most problems seems to be "the private sector will fix it!", while the left actually attempt to solve the problem. They may not get it right but at least they're not still attached to out-dated economic dogmas.

Politics should come down to selecting one solution or set of solutions over another, but that's not what we have right now. What we have is one side having a set of potential solutions and one side attempting to undermine the system that lets you decide.

[cyc]

Let's hope you don't poison the culture of any other organisation.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10812733

[crocos]

Bah-da Boom - Boom - Boom
Another one bits the dust.

[CCS]

Originally Posted by adonis

Fixed after a slight brain freeze.

No better.

Originally Posted by adonis

I'm about as anti-partisan as it gets.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAA! You're a fucking idiot.

[StN]

Has no-one posted the phantom Boag peeping pics from the live feed from Parliament? The noise on the radio this morning was that the reporter has a Twitter feed with a NZ suffix because his name is taken by a chap in England - a chap who was walking through the train station and getting tweets regarding the "Woman in red stalking him" and "Watch out for the woman behind the pillar". Much LOLs ensued.

http://twitter.com/#!/patrickgowernz

Stuff article with vid

[doppelgänger of someone]

Originally Posted by fixed_truth

Given that Labour said last year that it will reverse Nationals (proposed) changes to allow competition; would it be that profitable for private insurers to (briefly) enter the market?

That is assuming 1. Labour will be in power next term, and 2. Labour won't change tack in the future. I don't see #1 happening any time soon. As to #2, the theoretical benefit to liberalisation of accident insurance is clearly there, so I won't put it past them to change tack in the future.

That quote you had, whatever the source, does not say "liberalising accident insurance is bad for NZ". Taking it at face value, it just says the system ACC put into place to prepare to compete against private insurers were of no use to ACC once it becomes as monopoly again.

That is like someone said "do project X", you pretty much finished X, but at the last minute that someone says "we are not doing project X anymore". All the sunk costs into project X is completely wasted because of that U-turn.

[fixed_truth]

I wasn't commenting on whether or not "liberalising accident insurance is bad for NZ". Rather I was looking at the risk/motivation of private insurers entering the market after what happened last time and what Labour have said they'll do again.

Looking at polls trends, ipredict and every political commentator I've come across; election 2014 looks like it's going to be close. As for Labour changing tack and doing the opposite of what they said they would do; yeah I guess that's a possibility in the wacky world of politics.