Articles: ACC Claimants Support Group - ACC Focus

1. Capital cracks down on binge drinkers
   Wellington partygoers so drunk they need medical help could find themselves visited by counsellors in a move to crack down on repeat binge drinkers.The move is part of a plan to create a permanent base for a Wellington Free Ambulance triage centre near Courtenay Place, to operate on Friday and Saturday nights.Ambulance events co-ordinator...
2. Suing doctors a return to 'dark days', court told
   The lawyer for a surgeon sued after a woman became pregnant following a failed sterilisation operation, has warned against a return to the "dark days".The doctor, Keith Allenby of Auckland's Middlemore Hospital, says Terri Hannam should have ACC cover but ACC says she should not.Hannam was represented at a Supreme Court hearing today but...
3. Payments could harm families, court told
   Paying parents to care for their disabled adult children could harm family relationships, Court of Appeal judges have been told.Health Ministry lawyers say avoiding commercialising the care relationship and not making families reliant on the caregiving income were reasonable objectives of the ministry's policy not to pay family members to...
4. Home detention for Paraparaumu man who kept working while claiming ACC
   A ‘tip-off’ to ACC’s freephone fraud reporting line led to the conviction of Paraparaumu man Simon John Kruidenier in the Porirua District Court recently for defrauding ACC.The 58-year-old, who claimed seven years’ worth of weekly compensation payments while he continued to work, appeared in Court on 24 January 2012.Mr Kruidenier pleaded...
5. Benefit cheats: The $22m rip-off
   Benefit fraud cost taxpayers a record $22.6 million last year, and nine social welfare staff were sacked for ripping off the system.Figures released to the Herald under the Official Information Act show fraud detected by the Ministry of Social Development has tripled from $7.5 million five years ago.At that time, the ministry set up a...