Posts by George Darroch
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we automatically think that what we do online is somehow private, when it so often is not.
I tend to assume the opposite actually, and act as if everything I'm doing or saying is at risk of being read and compiled. The internet for me is like being in front of a large window. Unless you're an exhibitionist with nothing to lose, you should be careful about what you expose.
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Yes, I remembered that the biggest obstacle to an ACC like recovery system for non-accident healthcare is that Vote Health is already strained, and the demands of the health system are almost limitless - were we to have the best possible outcomes. Not to say it isn't possible, but Governments can only commit to one or two legacy projects like this in a term, and the current one is all out for the moment with Kiwisaver, WFF and other things.
As for rationing of healthcare on the basis of lifetime benefit to the patient, this already happens, people don't usually like to be to explicit about it. Pharmac and other government agencies use the concept of 'Quality Adjusted Life Years' to deal with it.
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Oh, of course you are Kyle -- and what's wrong with the idea of good old fashioned public 'shame' as a mechanism of social control?
If we're going to shame people, we might as well combine a few things at once. Put them on bikes. That way we can combine the obesity panic with some good old fashioned environmental/climate change public guilt, and make all the liberals happy.
Seriously though, if we're throwing round ideas for a billion, the cost of a stretch of new motorway, why not spend it on giving partial or complete rebates for hundreds of thousands of bikes? I'm not talking racers or mountain bikes, however, those are for racing and climbing mountains.
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Right, poll time
Yes, rugby fan, although much more so since moving to Australia.
Yep, I'm well aware that some illness-related disabilities can be somewhat self-inflicted (except there are genetic components in - for instance- alcohol-related disorders) - but so can accident-caused disabilities.
We currently have the awful situation where some diseases that result from environmental factors that happen over a relatively short period of time are covered, and others that happen gradually aren't. It really depends on your ability to prove that it was an "accident". It's pretty subjective, and it's awfully stressful for those who are trying to fight to be covered. I've had a physician instruct me on how to fill in a form, as my injury (which happened during running) may have been rejected as an accident. This also tends to make people rightfully resentful of the ACC, as they're suffering while others in similar or better circumstances are covered.
The idea of extending the ACC to cover rehibilitation and income protection for all illness isn't a new one. It's something that the Labour Government of 1990 seriously considered, and it's been suggested a few times since, although not as far as I know properly examined in recent years.
Perhaps we could gradually pull non-accident related illness into the system, perhaps starting first with cancer and arthritis.
There might be good reasons against it, but I haven't heard them yet.
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Why doesn't it cost 3 dollars for a bazillion tampons - just like our common-or-garden drug prescriptions?
Why the hell not?
I'd love it if we had a government that did things like that. What do we have to do to get one?
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Sorry, I retract a statement. The US does not have twice the per capita road toll, but instead is approximately 50% higher. But the general point stands.
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It's not a very real risk. It's a fairly minor risk for the near misses and long-term impact. We have about 60 workplace deaths a year. How many get prosecuted?
Not enough. It was worse, it has got better, and still needs to go a long long way. Don't hold your breath if National get in though.
In our system your victims niggling injury that they may live with for the rest of their life gets covered under ACC. You think "phew", and they have no alternative but to find an alternative approach to managing their life...
And that's reason to improve the way the ACC treats victims, and change the "culture of denial". Unfortunately, the only party I've seen take this issue seriously has been the Maori Party.
National's attitude to managing the ACC during the 1990s was even worse, and had a policy to clamp down on claimants institutionally. It's a mess that Labour haven't rectified.
And the way to improve road safety is to improve road safety. Clearly the right to sue doesn't work for the United States, which has twice the per capita road toll of New Zealand.
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Now if ACC could recover the costs of treating you from a liable party, wouldn't that be a reasonable way of increasing the risks of negligence?
Lets say I injure you in a car accident. A minor mistake on my part, but I'm at fault.
Under the present system I'm charged with causing an accident and fined. If there is judged to be serious negligence I'm charged with reckless or dangerous etc.
Now lets say you have a back injury that costs hundreds of thousands to treat, and you successfully sue me for that and loss of quality of life. I don't have accident liability insurance, or equally I do but the company finds a clause in which they can exclude me. So I'm in penury for the rest of my life.
When you start to think about what a system like that actually looks like - and there are multitudes of sad examples from the United States for us to consider - it starts to look pretty depressing. Thank the FSM we have the alternative which socialises risk so that we're not hit with things we're not able to protect ourselves from.
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You being bad / lax / negligent <> arse sued into the ground with punitive damages = you carry on with your bad safety behaviour.
Utter rubbish. If you're negligent as a business, you face the very real risk of prosecution. If you're negligent while driving, the same. The ACC also works proactively to increase safety practices and standards.
Unfortunately, in the past businesses it seems could almost get away with murder before they faced criminal sanctions. Thankfully this has changed, but it's still taking a while for attitudes to catch up.
The alternative you suggest, where people are tied up in the courts before they receive a single cent, and risk losing everything if they fail, is extraordinarily inefficient and inegalitarian.
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I am so, so confused by this. So confused. What?
Y'know, those builders and plumbers claiming to have sore backs. There must be dozens of them remaining undetected. We should abolish the ACC to get them back.