Patients being charged up to $40 extra for treatment of an injury should be demanding a refund from Murray McCully and Wyatt Creech, Labour ACC spokesperson Ruth Dyson said today.

"Labour has been warning for months that patients would pay the price of Mr McCully's ill-thought out ACC reforms. The Government blundered on, and only now is Mr McCully's colleague, the Health Minister Wyatt Creech, looking into the compliance costs loaded onto doctors.

"The new workplace accident report forms are complicated and designed to suit the needs of the insurance companies, not the doctor or patient. GPs are now spending more time filling in forms than treating the injury. 25 minutes on one patient's paperwork is not unusual. And the patient is having to pay.

"The chairwoman of the Wellington Independent Practice Association, Cathy O'Malley has put it plainly. "GP's are caught in the middle because they have to do this for people, but they are not going to pick up the cost, so unfortunately patients are having to face the music."

"Also alarming are reports that some patients are asking doctors not to complete the forms because of the extra time and cost. As a result, workplace accidents will go unreported.

"National's right-wing ideology has got in the way of common-sense," Ruth Dyson said. The next Labour Government will remove private insurance companies from providing workplace insurance, and will remove the red tape that is entangling doctors and is costing their patients."

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>