Page 1404 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 April 2019
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forced to choose between coverage for psychological and physical injuries. They will have to choose. It is appalling that somebody would have to make that choice. Adding to this pressure is the fact that the insurers will only cover one WPI assessment and do not have to cover any assessment if they believe the injuries have stabilised and there may be no permanent impairment.
If injuries have not stabilised after a set period an assessment may determine an estimated WPI, which is then used as the basis of compensation. This is inappropriate and unfair. It will potentially create an inequality in compensation and deprive the injured person of natural justice.
The injury definitions contained in the bill mean that claimants will be prohibited from claiming for anxiety or depression, that is, the injury definitions contained in the bill will mean that claimants will be prohibited from claiming for anxiety or depression—two common and potentially devastating psychological injuries—after an accident. Logically, any WPI assessment undertaken must consider the cumulative impact of all aspects of injuries which impact that individual’s quality of life.
It is not unusual for injured persons to suffer both physically and psychologically. Therefore, combined, these can have a significant impact on the quality of someone’s life. An injured person should not be required to elect just one of their injuries for assessment and provide it to the insurance company.
The issue is magnified by the current requirement that an injured person must have at least five per cent WPI to be eligible for quality of life benefits. Under the current, proposed, legislation an individual with four per cent physical and four per cent psychological will be excluded from quality of life benefits. Even though their combined WPI might be eight, if you were to put four and four together, in these circumstances they would not qualify. And this is fundamentally unfair. The purpose of quality of life benefits is to compensate an injured person for the loss of quality of life they experience due to injuries sustained in a motor accident.
Section 240 sets out quality of life damages through to 100 per cent. This effectively means that in order to get paid out at the full rate of 100 per cent you are probably dead twice over. That 100 per cent threshold is a furphy. No-one will receive the much-touted $500,000 in damages. In fact, most will not even be eligible for $50,000, one-tenth of that amount. The indexed damages are grossly and wholly inadequate, which means that practically no claimants will qualify for any meaningful damages.
If a damages threshold is to be set, the quantum each individual is awarded should be determined by the courts. The so-called exceptions for WPI in the bill are ineffective, because they are controlled by the insurers or are untested and uncertain. Significant occupational impacts are only vaguely defined, and it is unclear how they will operate.
The regulations for the newly created children’s exception require that the injured child must be undergoing treatment and care approved by the relevant insurer. Effectively, the insurers remain the gatekeepers of the medical treatment for children. This is completely inappropriate. We cannot entrust this power to an entity with a
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