Warren Forster: ACC Lawyer and researcher on the insurer's deficit

An ACC lawyer says there's a simple answer to the insurer's deficit problem.  

The Scheme's recorded a net deficit of $1.5 billion, blowing the total out to $13.8 billion. 

ACC lawyer and researcher Warren Forster told Mike Hosking tackling this issue requires looking at it over a generation. 

He says they need to be careful about value for the money they collect and stop changing how they calculate the amount needed.  

Forster says ACC did really well with its return on investment this year. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
AICC, if you didn't already know, has major money issues.
Their annual report out shows a one point five billion
dollar deficit for the year. That adds to last year
seven point two billion dollar hole, so we're now added
all up thirteen point eight billion in the red. Warren
Foster is an ACC lawyer and also researcher. Back with us,
Warren morning, Good morning. What's the problem? Can you make
it simple? Is it the money they earn versus the

(00:20):
money they spend? I mean, can they earn more or
spend less or what?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, it actually is pretty simple. We need to look
at it over a generation. We need to collect money
to pay for things. We need to be careful about
how we pay for things and what we actually get
with them under we spend, and then we need to
stop changing how we count how much money we need.
So of the deficit this year, ACC actually did really
well with its return on investments. It got four point

(00:45):
five billion return on investment, but it changed the way
it counted how much money it says it needs and
says we need five point eight billion more than we
needed last year. So that's how they got to this
sort of bit in the middle. But we really need
to have a good look at ACS and think is
it actually doing what we wanted to do and the
way we want it to do it, because you know,
it's pretty concerning some of the stuff that's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Indeed, are they lax, Well, they're either lax or they're bad.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
But we need to remember that we didn't get in
this position by bad luck. We made a number of
decisions policy decisions along the way, and we stopped rehabilitating
people properly. In the old days, ACC would actually ring
up and talk to the claimant, they'd bring up and
talk to the employer that helped you get back to work.
That stuff is all formed by the wayside of the

(01:37):
emails sent backwards and forwards, and we're not actually getting
people back to work. The spinners that a SEC has
helped eight thousand long term claimants get back to work
or independence, and normally there's around three thousand, so it's
five thousand more. But of those five thousand people who've
been on ACC for more than a year, I'd be
really surprised if those people actually got back to work.

(01:59):
The people we speak to every day just get kicked off,
and it's the same thing we start seeing as that
ACC is not actually helping people rehabilitate. It takes forever
to get ACC to even make a decision on surgery.
Some of my clients are waiting three months or six
months to get a decision on whether they can actually
get surgery so they can get better and go back
to work. And that is the complete opposite of what

(02:22):
ACC is meant to be doing. And these costs just
blow out when someone's been off work for a year
waiting for surgery exactly, it's really hard to get in
the back.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I think we've all got individual anecdotal circumstances in which
we've seen a system that doesn't work properly. Warre appreciate it. Warrenforster,
who's an a sc lawyer, also researcher. For more from
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