Dom Post on ACC

Today’s Dom Post editorial:

The annual cost of claims paid out by ACC has grown 12 per cent a year, and is expected to top $3 billion this year. A more generous approach to funding physiotherapy, adopted in 2004, was expected to cost $8.9 million, but has been growing at nine times that. This financial year, it is expected to be $139 million.

An extension of the medical misadventure provisions in 2005, when they cost $42 million, was expected to increase costs by $8.7 million a year. Instead, this financial year, ACC expects to spend $82 million. The real cost of the 2007 extensions to the scheme in 13 areas, estimated to cost $75 million a year, is, according to the Government, still unknown.

It is amazing this info never came out earlier.

The options the Government has are to raise levies, cut costs, cut cover or, most probably, a combination of the three.

Yes, but also to move out the date for full funding from 2014.

The trick for the Government now is to reform the ACC scheme so it is affordably workable but still delivers on the social contract.

It’s about saving ACC. Labour’s planned $47 a week levy increase for the average household must not be allowed to occur.