Exclusive
As of: 09/14/2022 6:00 p.m
Many nurses did not receive the promised corona bonus. This emerges from a Federal Audit Office report NDR, WDR and SZ is available. The culprit is an “error-prone” payment procedure – which could be used again.
In 2020, nursing staff in retirement homes and clinics were able to look forward to a corona bonus. The federal government donated 1000 euros per nurse – tax-free and without social security deductions. An additional 500 euros should come from the federal states. “In order to receive the part of the bonus financed by the federal government, you don’t have to do anything as an employee,” said Jens Spahn’s Ministry of Health on its website at the time. “You will automatically receive the bonus from your employer.”
A recent report by the Federal Audit Office, which examined the Ministry of Health’s financial management during the corona pandemic, shows that this promise was a bit too grandiose. The 29-page report was sent to the budget committee of the Bundestag at the end of last week and is available NDR, WDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
Payment often not requested at all
In the report, the Court of Auditors came to the conclusion that the procedure used to pay out the Corona premium was “prone to error and abuse”. “Numerous care facilities” had therefore not applied for the payment of federal funds – the 1000 euros from the state had not even reached the care workers employed in these facilities, criticized the Court of Auditors. At the same time, bosses of other care facilities claimed the corona bonus not only for their employees, but also “wrongly” for themselves.
In the meantime, the head of the ministry has changed, and Karl Lauterbach (SPD) followed Spahn (CDU) last December. This year there should again be tax-free one-off payments for employees in old people’s homes and hospitals, this time not under the name “Corona premium”, but as a “care bonus”. The Federal Court of Auditors fears “that the previous procedure’s susceptibility to errors and abuse will now also continue with the care bonus”. The ministry has received inquiries from NDR, WDR and SZ on the Court of Auditors report not answered.
The service union ver.di had already criticized the fact that many nursing staff did not receive the Corona bonus in the spring. That was “just disgraceful,” said board member Sylvia Bühler. After all, it’s about employees who often only get the minimum wage and who are “extremely challenged and at risk” in the pandemic. Bühler referred to an evaluation by a large tax consultancy company that had analyzed the business figures of more than a thousand nursing services.
The result of this, however, non-representative evaluation was devastating. Only just under 60 percent of employees in geriatric care would have received a corona bonus in 2020. Most of them in Brandenburg, the fewest in Baden-Württemberg. According to ver.di board member Bühler, there can be “no excuse” for the failure of nursing services to pay out the premium. Nursing homes and nursing companies should be able to “apply for a government-funded premium and pass it on to workers.” Anything else shows disinterest.
Criticism of how test centers deal with fraud
The Federal Court of Auditors is even more critical of the pandemic policy. Contrary to Lauterbach’s many claims that fraud at the corona test centers should now really be combated, the report states that “according to the assessment of the Federal Audit Office, effective combating of fraud is hardly possible”, because the changed rules are also unsuitable to prevent abuse to oppose “It seems questionable whether funds wrongly paid out can be successfully reclaimed,” the auditors note. The State Criminal Police Office in Berlin assumes damage of more than one billion euros nationwide – through fake test accounts or test kits that have been billed too high.
The Court of Auditors also expressed incomprehension that Lauterbach relieved the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians significantly in the accounting check of the citizen tests, but they should continue to collect the lump sums at the previous level. According to the Court of Auditors, the change should also “lead to an appropriate reduction in the reimbursement of administrative costs”. When asked whether the ministry wanted to take up this suggestion, it left unanswered.
The hospitals also received a lot of money during the pandemic for keeping beds free for corona patients. Here, too, the Federal Court of Auditors is critical. In the budget of the Ministry of Health, another 5.7 billion euros have been earmarked for this this year alone. “In practice,” writes the Court of Auditors, these billions are “largely no longer used to keep any necessary treatment capacities free,” but simply to secure the clinics’ economic security.
“Subsidy to Hospitals”
“Billions of funds to fight the pandemic were used in part to subsidize hospitals independently of the pandemic,” writes the Court of Auditors, concluding: “In large parts, foreseeable abuse of the use of funds has not been and will not be effectively counteracted.” The Lauterbach Ministry did not want to comment on this conclusion either.
The audit report is to be discussed in November in the responsible budget or auditing committee of the Bundestag and only then be published. The Ministry of Health had already taken a position and the Court of Auditors took its advice into account. This means: From the point of view of the Court of Auditors, the Ministry has not been able to refute the criticism contained in the audit report.