The health insurance companies criticize the care reform of the health minister.
(Photo: IMAGO/Chris Emil Janssen)
Berlin The nursing care funds are empty, at the same time more and more residents are ending up on social assistance – and employees are at the limit. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) wants to tackle the problems with a care reform, which, according to the statutory health insurance companies (GKV), has many gaps.
This emerges from an unpublished statement by the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds on the Lauterbach draft law, which is available to the Handelsblatt.
“Even if the attempt in the measures presented cannot be overlooked to compensate for the increased care costs for people in need of care and their relatives, this attempt must be rated as too short-sighted,” it says. An entire branch of social insurance threatens to no longer be able to fulfill its mission of protecting a central life risk.
Among other things, Lauterbach plans to expand the benefits of social long-term care insurance. In order to further strengthen home care, the care allowance is to increase by five percent as of January 1, 2024, according to the draft law. Actually, the care allowance should have been raised in 2021 after its last increase in 2017.
According to the cash registers, the increase planned by Lauterbach is not large enough. Instead of 545 euros today to 624 euros, the care allowance in 2025 would only increase to 601 euros per month.
Leading association speaks of “devaluation of family care”
This means that in what is now the seventh year, the benefit entitlement will remain the same regardless of inflation and general gross wage developments. “People in need of care who only receive care allowance experience an ongoing devaluation of the care provided for relatives,” write the health insurers. It is similar with day and night care.
The funds also critically evaluate the planned higher contribution rate, which is to rise from 3.05 to 3.4 percent. The contributors would be burdened primarily because – contrary to what was promised in the coalition agreement – the federal government does not participate more in the so-called non-insurance benefits.
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These include the additional expenses for the pandemic. In addition, it is “by no means certain” whether the additional revenue from contributions can financially stabilize the long-term care insurance. The deficit of the nursing care funds is currently 4.5 billion euros. In a fire letter, health insurance and social organizations had demanded that the deficit be compensated for with tax money. However, this is not mentioned in the draft law.
Lauterbach also plans to relieve insured persons with several children from the second to the fifth child of 0.15 contribution rate points per child. In doing so, he is implementing a judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court, which had called for greater consideration of the parenting effort.
According to the health insurers, however, this relief could arrive too late for the insured. According to the statement, the “much too late” specification meant that employers and health insurance companies could not ensure that the relief would be passed on in good time from July. “This would be equivalent to an unlawful contribution assessment,” it says, and may require a “retrospective correction” of overpaid contributions.
More: Study – More people in need of care in the home dependent on social assistance