Long-term care insurance: DAK warns of €2.25bn gap – patient advocates attack Linnemann
The insurer expects a much bigger funding gap next year than forecast and wants €5.2 billion in Covid aid repaid. Patient advocates accuse the health minister of contradictions.
Archive image · Photo: Dr. Frank Gaeth / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Germany's statutory long-term care insurance faces a bigger deficit next year than expected. Health insurer DAK-Gesundheit projects a gap of €2.25 billion. The planned surcharge for childless people will raise at most €2.4 billion rather than the €3.3 billion assumed in the law, the insurer says, raising the previously expected shortfall of €1.35 billion by at least €900 million. DAK chief executive Andreas Storm warns the care funds could become insolvent as early as the start of the year without countermeasures and is demanding that the federal government repay €5.2 billion in Covid aid. The health ministry did not comment on the figures.
Sharp criticism of Health Minister Carsten Linnemann (CDU) came from the German Foundation for Patient Protection. Its chairman Eugen Brysch told the Rheinische Post that cuts in the care restructuring law would push the five million people cared for at home and their relatives "to the brink of collapse". It was contradictory to cut benefits while a commission was meant to direct money to where help is most needed, he said. Brysch wants private and statutory care insurance merged.
The 13-member care commission began work on Tuesday and is due to present proposals by the end of January. SPD health politician Christos Pantazis said it would also examine a fairer distribution of costs between statutory and private care insurance; the aim was a fundamental reform with reliable care, sustainable financing and more social justice.