Disability Insurance Observer: Australia

When officials describe the weaknesses of current Australian programs for people with disabilities, it often seems as if they could be describing the U.S. system. Officials note, for example, that “even within a jurisdiction, people deal with a multitude of programs and agencies, few of which coordinate or share information,” and that “funding for service providers uses outdated models and comes with unnecessary compliance burdens, stifling innovation.”

Another thing that’s striking is how flowery the predictions about the effects of the NDIS are. Once the NDIS is up and running, “people with disability and their carers will have peace of mind that the individualised care and support they receive will change as their needs change,” program managers promise.

A third thing that’s striking is that it’s harder to tell what benefits the NDIS managers are really promising than what the PPACA implementers are promising.

I don’t know if states and the U.S. Department and Health and Human Services (HHS) can deliver on what PPACA is promising to provide for U.S. residents, but I at least can make up a list of what agencies think PPACA will provide. I’m cribbing some of my description of what I think the NDIS is supposed to provide from Australian media accounts, I’m not sure, from the NDIS site, what the program is ultimately supposed to provide, other than endless, personalized peace of mind.

John Walsh, a consultant, told the Australian Financial Services Council in July 2011 that he thinks the NDIS will not crowd out private insurance arrangements, because private disability insurance programs usually replace income, and the NDIS will not be an income replacement program.

Regardless: It might be interesting to watch to see what goes right, and wrong, with implementation of the NDIS, to see if any of the lessons learned there could lead to ideas about what to do and not to do in the U.S. disability, health and long-term care insurance markets.