Parliament Committee Hearing with MAA

On Monday, 27th August 2007, the Motor Accidents Association held an open hearing in conjunction with the LawSociety of New South Wales, the New South Wales Bar Association and the Insurance council of Australia to discuss the application and appropriateness of certain 'schemes' (this word came up a lot) within the Motorindustry.

Issues discussed in the hearing related to policies of treatment for those in and how they related to the Motor Accidents Council. To be honest, for the first ten minutes I was there I thought they were talking about road rules and was wondering why no one from the RTA was present. This is because they spent the entire introductiontalking about schemes but did not actually say what these 'schemes' were. Of course, the members of parliament ould have been aware, studying the material before they got there, however for the audience it was no stage play and often confusing, at least at first.

The hearing started to get interesting when Richard Grellman spoke of early treatment (via claims) for patients in motor accidents. This idea would cause people to get in and out of treatment faster, lowering costs because the injury may not get to the fatal stage it could if left untreated too long. This saves the Motor Accidents Authoritymoney because people are treated early. Also discussed was the need for further compensation to those in vehicle accidents in order to avoid expensive courtcases. The Medical group at the hearing were discussing the idea of treating patients early and compensation but were having difficulty because the issue came up that each doctor may have different opinions on the severity of ones injury and its relation to insurance. One surgeon may say an injuryis 5% critical, yet the patient could be treated by another who could say the injury is 7% critical. This impacts the costs at the end of treatment.

Issues that came up were that it is rather impossible to quantify a person's pain and suffering, and that if a persons injury is serious, they will have much to pay back later. The hearing saw opinions of all, including the Law Society of NSW who exposed the fact that The Motor AccidentsAssociations ratings had dropped in recent years.

The RTA was mentioned at one stage and I think it would have been of benefit for the Motor Accidents Association to have had the RTA present because road regulations such as level of innebriation and restrictions could have come into place when speaking of treatment and compensation.

I found the hearing long and at times confusing, but it did become more interesting as time went on. There waslittle argument or frustration shown, which surprised me, it was more about getting the facts right, and in fact, it seemed the people speaking, especially from the Motor Accidents Association were unsure of exact figures anddidn't have an answer when asked about judging the exact amount of physical pain one needs to go through to determinethe cost of treatment.

The idea of patients being treated faster was well agreed upon, it was 'severity of injury' that caused doubt.

An interesting hearing though it would have been better if I had understood some of the abbreviations the groups used at the time!