The Equity-for-illness Alliance is calling on the New Zealand Government to create a single needs-based National Health and Disability Scheme for all New Zealanders: founded upon fair and equitable principles, incorporating both accident and non-accident-related needs.

The Equity-for-illness Alliance members are made up of both professional and client-based organisations. Including:

Occupational Therapists Association, Society of Physiotherapists, Nurses Organisation, Cerebral Palsy Society, Cancer Society, Cystic Fibrosis Association, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Multiple Sclerosis Society, Deaf Aotearoa, Post polio support Society, Parents of Vision Impaired, ME Support Group, Thames/Hauraki Disability Resource Centre Trust, Diabetes NZ South Canterbury, Equity Support Group, South Canterbury Stroke Club.

Recognizing that the same social consequences affect everyone, regardless of the cause of their health needs, Parliament made a commitment in 1974 to include sickness and incapacity into ACC within two years. Thirty-six years later this commitment still waits to be honoured. Our purpose as a collective and collaborative Alliance is to see this legislation enacted to provide for the health needs of all New Zealanders.

As a country we are not alone in facing these challenges. Dissatisfied with its own health structure, the Australian Government is currently re-considering its approach to what has been described by Bill Shorten, (Australian Federal Parliamentary Secretary of Disabilities) as the last frontier of practical civil rights in this country, (Australia.) The National Disability and Care Alliance of Australia are promoting the need for Australia to adopt a compulsory no-fault insurance scheme that provides individualized, ongoing financial and case management support for anyone disabled at birth or as the result of catastrophic accident or chronic illness. In the United States, President Obama has begun the process to create a national insurance scheme to safeguard the health of its citizens, eager to move away from the privatised health market that is unaffordable for so many thousands of its citizens.

Here in New Zealand it is worth remembering that ACC exists because of brave political thinking. ACC's revolutionary approach to social insurance legislation not only endorses the no-fault provision it also provides a solution to the financial implications of such a scheme. What the ACC legislation failed to do, however, remains as unfinished business that to this day haunts its legacy.

While our current health system fails to deliver fairness or equity and therefore is a travesty against the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Bill of Rights, the two-tier system wastes precious resources through bureaucratic duplication and legal defence against potential claimants. This is a matter that desperately needs to be addressed.