PressSplit
Private health insurance wants insured people to use their assets to cover the costs of care. The social association sharply criticizes this plan.
Hamm – A short-term press conference by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach took place in October. The SPD politician felt compelled to comment on the financial difficulties of nursing care insurance. “The nursing care insurance is not insolvent,” emphasized Lauterbach. However, he admitted: “We have a weak income and high expenses.” Experts agree that the financing of long-term care insurance is on shaky ground. How can she for them? Interest be guaranteed?
“Even more savings”: Pensioners should pay for care costs with their own money
The private health insurance company (PKV) commissioned a report that was carried out by the German Economic Institute. The result: The insured should mainly pay for the long-term care insurance themselves. “Despite all prophecies of doom, the vast majority of people can bear the costs of care in old age on their own,” explained the chairman of the PKV Association, Thomas Brahm. “Politicians should use this fact to put nursing care insurance on a sustainably financed and generation-appropriate foundation.” What does this mean for pensioners?
The report concludes that more than 70 percent of households of retirement age in Germany could finance inpatient care over several years. According to this, households aged 66 and over in Germany have an average net assets of almost 320,000 euros (including real estate assets). “If you take into account not only the income but also the financial situation of the pensioners, they can cover their own contributions to the nursing home of around 3,000 euros per month for five years on their own,” says the report.
Therefore, one could expect private households to use their assets to finance potential care costs “and not to subsidize the costs of home care across the board, as is currently done through the benefit surcharge”. The authors of the study argue that this would protect the nursing care insurance budget and the contributors from even greater increases in contribution rates. Rising contributions would further increase labor costs in Germany.
“Would be a fatal signal”: Paying for nursing care insurance from your assets?
The social association criticizes the position of private health insurance. “It is true: the care system in Germany is in danger of collapsing, we now need a real and comprehensive reform quickly,” says the chairwoman of the social association, Michaela Engelmeier IPPEN.MEDIA: “But to rely even more on the savings of those affected when it comes to financing would be a fatal signal to all those in need of care and their relatives.”
Michaela Engelmeier sat in the Bundestag for the SPD from 2013 to 2017. She has been chairwoman of the German Social Association (SoVD) for two years. © Gregor Fischer/picture alliance
Because: “These almost five million people are already under enormous financial and emotional pressure.” Increasing contributions and higher personal contributions are “no longer affordable for many”.
Social association wants “citizens’ insurance”
The social association advocates a different model: a “citizens’ insurance” into which all citizens – “including civil servants and higher earners” – pay. “Then the care costs could be spread more broadly,” says Engelmeier. This would strengthen the long-term care insurance budget and “not only protect the insured from higher contribution rate increases, but could even enable contribution reductions.”
Civil servants are exempt from social security contributions and, for example, do not pay into the pension fund. However, you have to take care of your own health insurance, which can result in additional costs of several hundred euros per month.
The social association’s “pension fund for all” model is repeatedly discussed politically. The Sahra Wagenknecht alliance spoke out in favor of this in the eastern election campaign, and the Left recently submitted a corresponding proposal. In it, the party also calls for “a one-off and extraordinary increase in all pensions by ten percent.” There must also be a minimum pension of 1,250 euros net for single people.
The traffic light coalition is discussing a draft law to reform private pensions. A new calculation shows how much money could be lost. A widow’s pension case is also causing a stir: a widow goes to court because her deceased husband’s employer refuses to pay. Is this legally correct?
