Solidary financing of long-term care insurance

Social Union: Solidary financing of long-term care insurance required

31/03/2011

At its meeting on February 26, 2011, the Federal Board of the People's Solidarity decided on the position paper "Caring for solidarity, meeting needs and ensuring high quality". With its 280,000 members and 16,000 employees, many of them in care services and institutions, the Volkssolidarität intends to contribute to the debate on statutory new regulations in nursing.

"The people solidarity is committed to a reform of long-term care insurance, the future care solidarity and better meet the real needs of people in need of care," said the President of the People's Solidarity, Prof. Gunnar Winkler, to the paper.

"The challenges of an aging society for care can and must be overcome in solidarity. This requires further development of long-term care insurance. The performance-related concept of care is no longer up-to-date. We are in favor of a new regulation that takes better account of the needs of people in need of care with dementia and mental illness. The preservation of self-reliance and the social participation of the people to be cared for must be more in the foreground of the care. This also means opening up new scope for better nursing care instead of nursing care every minute. This path must be linked to a significant upgrading of the nursing profession. "

At the same time, popular solidarity demands that prevention and rehabilitation should be promoted more strongly before care. For this purpose, she proposes to make long-term care insurance an independent institution of rehabilitation services. Association President Winkler emphasized that growing demands on care as the number of people in need of care and benefits expanded were not met by the current funding mechanism.

"The people solidarity is for a civil insurance in the care. However, we have a risk structure and financial equalization between social and private long-term care insurance before a citizen's insurance. It can not be that the private long-term care insurance continues to accumulate surpluses of currently 19 billion euros, while over the social care insurance with tight finances well over 90 per cent of the supply tasks must be provided. We reject the privatization of the care risk, for example through a capital-backed reserve. Care must not be taken to repeat the wrong path of health lump sum payments. "In its paper, popular solidarity also includes positions on the development of the nursing profession, on nursing education and training, on the care of family carers and on reconciling care and work and the development of the care infrastructure. (pm)

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