John MacDonald: Is it time to end the ACC freeride for tourists?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

This is not the first time I’ve said this, but we are the people’s republic of pushovers, aren’t we? The way we give overseas visitors free ACC cover.

Even more so when you consider the news that ACC wants to increase its levies by two or three times the rate of inflation over the next three years because it's taking longer and costing more for people to recover from their injuries.

It's got a massive hole in its budget and your levies are going up, mine are going up, but your mate from the States who comes here and hurts themselves doing something gets free cover. And it has to stop.

Especially, when you consider that there are only two countries that do the same for us: Australia and the UK.

But, you know, the argument against making people from overseas pay their way more will probably be similar to the argument against increasing the international visitor levy. That, if you make tourists pay for their own treatment if they injure themselves, they won’t come here. Which is just nonsense.

ACC Minister Matt Doocey is trotting-out the Government’s usual line about expecting ACC to “look at existing costs within the scheme to ensure that any levy increase is absolutely justified before final decisions are made.

“The Government's expectation has been made clear to ACC that it must deliver greater value for the funds it receives. I am monitoring this very closely and will be ensuring ACC is improving its financial performance."

Which ACC is already doing. It’s been cutting staff numbers. Back in May, it announced plans to cut more than 300 jobs – about 10 percent of its workforce.

So ACC is already doing the cost-cutting the Government wants, but it also wants to charge more in levies.

And my view is that if those of us who live here in New Zealand are going to have to pay more, then we should have a re-think about how generous we are when it comes to people who don’t live here.

And I think we need to back ourselves and make visitors pay their way more.

The two approaches I think we could use are either effectively charging non-residents at the door when they need treatment. So they break a leg, head to the emergency department and, once they’ve got the plaster on and they’re ready to leave, they get the credit card out. Or we make it mandatory for anyone visiting New Zealand to have travel insurance. Because it isn’t at the moment.

If you’ve been overseas yourself, I bet you haven’t gone without travel insurance. That’s because we kind of expect or assume, don’t we, that if we need medical care while we’re away, it’s not going to be on the house. Unless it’s Australia or the UK that we’re visiting.

When I went to the UK three months ago, I still took out travel insurance. But I know that if I had had an accident while I was there, my insurance company would have made me take as much free stuff as possible before paying for anything.

And the same for people coming here from overseas. If they’ve got travel insurance, do you think their insurers will say “we'll pay for everything”? Of course not. They’ll say, ‘take the free stuff then come back to us if you need more’.

And that free stuff is what you and I pay for. And what ACC wants us to pay even more for.

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