Health Minister Karl Lauterbach warns of an “explosive increase” in the number of nursing care cases. Nevertheless, nursing care insurance is not to be reformed in this legislative period. Health economist Heinz Rothgang sees this as a “declaration of bankruptcy”.

In 2023, there were 361,000 more nursing cases in Germany than in the previous year. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach described this as an “explosive increase” in an interview with “Spiegel”. He had expected an increase of 50,000 people.

In an interview with the “Spiegel”, Bremen health economist Heinz Rothgang considers this expectation to be “extremely low”. Since the 2017 reform, in which the number of care levels was increased from three to five, there has been an “average increase of 326,000 people per year”.

There are many reasons for the increase, explains Rothgang. On the one hand, long Covid and post Covid could play a role, which affects “an alarming number of people”. In addition, the reform is still having an impact. “For a long time, many people thought that they would only get a care level if they had severe physical limitations,” says the health economist. “Now more and more people are learning that psychological problems can also be reasons for this, and are applying.”

Lauterbach admitted in the interview that nursing care insurance would not be reformed in this legislative period. “He is essentially saying: There is a huge problem in nursing care, we have solutions in the drawer, but we will not implement them because we cannot agree on them in the traffic light coalition,” Rothgang fumes. “That is, frankly, a declaration of bankruptcy. You cannot act like that as a minister.”

While he acknowledges that reform would entail higher budgetary costs, the alternative is “that contributors will incur costs” – even though the government “had promised the opposite”.

In order to prevent the increase in contributions, Rothgang demands that the traffic light coalition “simply implement the points” that are anchored in the coalition agreement. “It would even be enough to pick just one point from them.”

He has three suggestions for this: financing non-insurance benefits (such as pension contributions for caregivers) from tax revenue, financing additional costs due to the pandemic, or raising the contribution assessment ceiling, which would only burden wealthier contributors.