The general consensus among GPs about the opening up of the ACC employers’ account to competition has been a loud groan and upset at the prospect of confusion and enforced time wasting that was the reality of the last time this happened.

First the Government needs to create a level playing field for service providers that does not have patients being involved in a lottery as to what fees they can expect to pay and what level of benefits they can expect to receive. Can I suggest that the payments to all GP providers be standardised at the hourly rate paid to A&M clinics and rural practices.

For starters, all those clinics have said that their ACC payments are considerably more than their earnings under the promulgated legislated fees. Being on a timed basis also allows compensation for the longer explanations required and the time spent chasing up recalcitrant insurance companies some of which may use overseas call centres as they seek to maximise their profits.

It seems to me that many people do not understand the basis of ACC’s funding for the future and their investments in property and the international share markets. Many of the people involved in the investment side of the business will be paid a lot more than the basic wage but as people are discovering with superannuation saving, investments for long term return are about getting in and staying the distance, not chopping and changing every three years just because the political philosophy changes.

In the hotel industry a number of pubs got around the law requiring workers to be paid time and a half and a day off in lieu for those who worked on Labour Day by making the workers the owners for the day. The same thing could happen with ACC as employers and insurance companies try to wrangle their way out of their responsibilities. Workers with more than one job will be confused and require different forms for each insurer adding to the confusion. The payment system was hideous.

Does Rodney Hide believe that reintroducing a failed arrangement without the support of the service providers and doctors needed to run the scheme is a hiding to nothing? Will the insurance companies rush in again to be burnt when the Government ideology changes back in another few years? Didn’t some of the insurers from the last round of contestable workers accident insurance go bust?

What about the long term problems like work stress introduced since the last reforms and the now legal occupations like prostitution where rape, murder and sexually transmitted disease seem to rate as work-related hazards? After nearly 40 years of worker education and OSH enforcement, will noise-induced hearing loss drop off the compensation list as generation X and Y self-inflict deafness with MP3 players or will “iPod use” become a risk factor required to be recorded in general practice records? Will finance company workers be compensated for work stress, or artists for inspirational block and depression?

The list goes on and the thoughts of having more stupid bureaucracy added to general practice for the sake of political ideology and power is decidedly unappealing.