According to the draft, the contribution to long-term care insurance should increase by 0.35 percentage points on July 1st. It is currently 3.05 percent of gross income, for childless people it is 3.4 percent. In view of the relief demanded by the Federal Constitutional Court for families with many children, the childless surcharge is to be raised by 0.25 contribution rate points to 0.6 contribution rate points. Those who have several children should in turn pay 0.25 contribution rate points less per child from the second to the fifth child under the age of 25.
On the expenditure side, the draft provides for more funds for home care. The care allowance is to increase by five percent at the turn of the year. This money is given to those in need of care who are cared for at home on a voluntary basis – usually by relatives. The so-called benefits in kind for the services of nursing services that look after those affected at home also increase by five percent.
For people in nursing homes, the so-called performance surcharges are to be raised by five to ten percentage points. These surcharges are paid to the nursing home by the long-term care insurance fund in order to reduce the personal contribution to be borne by the person in need of care.
Lauterbach said in Berlin that it was a “difficult law” that had been negotiated within the federal government for a long time. A “stable reform” for the current legislative period has now been launched. “But of course it can’t go on like this,” admitted Lauterbach, with a view to the financial situation of the system. He pointed out that a commission has already been appointed to deal with questions of long-term financing.
The Central Association of Statutory Health and Nursing Care Insurance (GKV) reacted dissatisfied. The government jumps “clearly too short and misses the self-imposed goals from the coalition agreement,” said GKV Vice President Gernot Kiefer. Among other things, he complained about “annual expenses for non-insurance services such as the almost four billion euros for social security contributions for caring relatives”, which puts a strain on long-term care insurance.
Diakonie President Ulrich Lilie explained that Lauterbach’s proposal “again only means white ointment for the badly hit long-term care insurance”. The minister expresses himself “for a fundamental care reform, which also puts the financing on a solid basis. This includes a permanent federal subsidy for non-insurance services.”
The Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband also described the draft as “half-hearted and completely inadequate”. Caritas President Eva Welskop-Deffaa criticized, among other things, that in view of the high inflation the increase in care allowance was not enough. The board of directors of the German Foundation for Patient Protection, Eugen Brysch, also criticized that the increase was “not remotely related to the cost explosion” of the past few years. He called for care services to be linked to inflation.
Group Vice President Maria Klein-Schmeink and care expert Kordula Schulz-Asche announced a need for change for the Greens. “The agreed simplification when applying for relief services in home care is missing. The measures to improve working conditions also fall short of what was agreed,” they complained. In addition, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) does not provide enough money. “In all of these points, we will press for improvements in the parliamentary process.
