September 13, 2011

National Tragedy Unflolding For Elderly

There is a national tragedy unfolding in our elderly population and in an effort to address it National Grey Power and The National Foundation for the Deaf Inc. have combined forces in opposition to the 6% disability threshold and 9% aged threshold that ACC has introduced.

Grey Power National Chairperson Roy Reid said today that “ACC should be paying for injury related hearing loss rehabilitation and this is not currently happening because of the two discriminatory thresholds. This primarily affects people aged over 50, with the average age of claimants being 69, and we are gravely concerned at the impact of this recently changed ACC law.”

Claimants are now forced to prove they meet these thresholds before their claims for noise induced industrial deafness rehabilitation are accepted by ACC and they are able to get vitally needed ACC hearing rehabilitation.

“Though age is not an accident, by introducing an age threshold of up to 12.5 % that is applied to every case, even if the claimant does not have age related hearing loss, it becomes discriminatory and extremely unfair” said Roy Reid

ACC is operating a stringent, and some would say harsh, assessment of hearing injuries, and last year accepted only 42% of claims.

Louise Carroll, CEO of The National Foundation for the Deaf Inc. reports that over the last couple of weeks 27 ACC claimants who have been denied appropriate rehabilitation by ACC have come to The National Foundation for the Deaf seeking advice and support and the problem seems to be escalating.

“What ACC has done is used the age argument to introduce part-charges for hearing aids and now we are seeing those who cannot afford what ACC decides is their share, going without rehabilitation altogether. Funding for half a hearing aid doesn’t work!”.

In the United Kingdom the government provides hearing aids at no cost, to those who need them. As a nation we do not accept neglect of our elderly citizens and both organisations believe the Prime Minister needs to act now to stop this situation deteriorating even further as there has been no effective action from Ministers to date.

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