John MacDonald: ACC is in desperate need of treatment

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

Here’s my perception of ACC: some people get ACC pay-outs at the drop of a hat and others have to fight, for what can be years.

And it’s the fighting bit that seems to be biting ACC on the backside, with the news that it’s gone from having a $900 million surplus last year to a $7.2 billion deficit this year.

It’s saying one of the reasons for that is that the courts are coming out with rulings telling it to pay people more money than it wanted to in the first place. Which, if that is the case, tells me that the ACC model is broken. It needs a re-think.

I would hate us to be without ACC. But, when you have it saying that it’s losing money hand-over-fist because the courts are disagreeing with some of its decisions, then it needs a good looking-at. It is broken.

I’ve got a mate who stuffed his shoulder doing his job. He was a painter for years from when he left school, and his shoulder packed a sad after years and years of painting.

If you’ve ever done a bit of painting, you’ll know how doing it day-in, day-out must mess around with your body. Your shoulder. Your neck.

So this guy had a genuine work injury, but it seemed like he had to fight for his shoulder operation for yonks. And I’m pretty sure that was after ACC had already paid out for his other shoulder. It was nuts.

Eventually, after a huge battle, ACC agreed to cover it.

So he’s an example of one end of the ACC spectrum. And he’s not the most extreme example I’ve heard of someone who has been battling ACC for about four years.

What happened there is she fell from her deck, hit her back on a railway sleeper in the garden, hasn’t been able to work since and, since then, she’s been battling ACC to prove that the back injury wasn’t something that existed before she had her accident.

And she has been fighting and fighting and fighting. She used to be a full-time midwife but now spends her days in bed or in a wheelchair, and, by the sound of it, it seems battling ACC has become her life.

This particular case is still going on. But, if this person is eventually successful and does manage to prove that ACC is in the wrong, then it will be another example of the types of cases that ACC is partly blaming for its $7.2 billion deficit.

It’s saying that court rulings are being handed down in favour of the people wanting more compensation or wanting, at least, some compensation.

Then you get the other examples where ACC money flows like a tap.

An example I’ve got is when one of the kids came off their bike at the adventure park, in Christchurch. He was checked over by the patrol staff there and they thought he might have been concussed and said we should take him to after-hours, just in case.

I did that and they checked him out and they said ‘no concussion’. But just as I was about to pay, the person behind the counter asked if we’d like them to clean up some of his scratches.

Which made sense to me. Since we were there.

So they did that and then they said, because they’d cleaned up the scratches, the whole thing would be covered by ACC and we didn’t have to pay anything.

Which seemed to me like a rort. I wasn’t sure who was rorting who, but there was no need for ACC to cover it. But that’s what happened.

ACC boss Megan Main says it’s a bit of a balancing act for them, when it comes to the level of ACC support people get.

Quite often, though, that's where the trouble starts.

Either way, what we're seeing is proof that the ACC model —while better than nothing— is coming unstuck and needs an overhaul.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.