Care in the crisis
Caritas: Wealthy people should be burdened more with care financing
The number of people in need of care is growing rapidly Photo
© Sebastian Willnow/dpa
Nursing care insurance needs a facelift, but does the traffic light coalition still have the strength to do it? Caritas and DGB are urging swift action to avert an impending collapse.
The President of the German Caritas Association, Eva Maria Welskop-Deffaa, wants to involve wealthy people more in financing nursing care insurance. “The future of Care is a major demographic and social hazard,” Welskop-Deffaa told the newspapers of the Funke Media Group. Younger workers should not have to pay the price for this.
“Fair risk balancing includes involving able-bodied senior citizens in solidarity,” said the Caritas president. “It cannot be the case that nursing care insurance primarily protects the assets of the wealthy.”
On Wednesday, the Federal Cabinet will be dealing with a report on the financing of care and possible reforms. “The current financial situation of social long-term care insurance is largely shaped by the financial burdens during the corona pandemic, but to an even greater extent by the sustained sharp increase in the number of people in need of care, which goes far beyond what could be expected from demographic developments alone,” says a draft of the paper, which is available to the dpa.
DGB: “Care insurance for citizens” must come
In a statement, DGB board member Anja Piel therefore urged reforms for “a citizen’s long-term care insurance scheme into which more people pay, which covers all care costs and where there are no personal contributions that grow beyond measure”. Proposals from the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) are on the table. Long-term care insurance is expecting to be in the red this year. According to the latest information from the umbrella organization of statutory health insurance companies, a loss of 1.5 billion euros is expected, and 3.4 billion euros for 2025. This would correspond to a contribution increase of 0.2 points.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) recently made it clear that a care reform should be tackled. Observers, however, do not expect this to happen before the 2025 federal election.