Changes sought in A.C.C. system

Press, 20 February 1988, Page 3

Changes sought in A.C.C. system

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

The accident compensation scheme cannot continue in its present form, according to the Minister of Health, Mr Caygill.

The Law Commission’s review of the scheme was crucial to the Government’s reappraisal of the whole primary health care system, he said. The scheme had introduced a big inequity into health care. A system that subsidised some patients but not others could not be maintained. It provided free treatment for injury from accident but not for illness. “I do not see that we can maintain a system

that subsidises some treatments and not others,” Mr Caygill said. It was a system that, for example, subsidised drugs but not counselling. Mr Caygill told the biennial conference of the Society of Physiotherapists in Wellington yesterday that he was giving the lie to certain rumours that the Government had no Minister of Health. He set out his personal philosophy. “By temperament I am

a reformer, an incrementalist, rather than a revolutionary,” he said. This meant he was seeking manageable change. He supported a publicly funded and substantially publicly provided health system to achieve a more equitable access for all to health care within that system. “I am committed to the devolution of decisionmaking to the community, and I believe that the

interests of the health consumer should continue to be represented by elected health boards,” Mr Caygill said.

He had set himself four priorities this year. These included addressing anomalies in the primary health care system; improving management of hospital services; evolving hospital boards into area health boards; and dealing with the cost of pharmaceuticals.