According to Rainer Dulger, President of the employers’ association, the structure of long-term care insurance must undergo a fundamental reorganization. Dulger stated to “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland” that the benefits provided under the care scheme should increasingly be tied to life expectancy. He further argued that care services should be concentrated more strongly on those individuals who require particularly long-term and intensive support.
Looking ahead to the upcoming care reform, the president of the Federal Association of German Employers’ Associations (BDA) highlighted a second crucial requirement: a binding sustainability mechanism. This mechanism must link the level of benefits to changing demographics. Based on a position paper by the association, this proposal mirrors the stabilizing mechanism used in the pension system. Such a measure would temper the increase in care benefits if the number of people requiring care grows faster than the number of contributors. Concurrently, it could limit the rise in social care insurance benefits, thereby preventing excessive pressure on contribution rates.
The third area of concern raised by the employers’ president is the need to exclusively finance benefits that are unrelated to the insurance scheme through tax revenue, rather than placing the financial burden on contributors. Dulger stressed that “everything must be done to ensure that contributions to the care insurance do not rise further” insisting that the contribution rate must remain stable. Furthermore, he warned against repeating the mistakes seen in the current health reform planning-specifically, imposing additional billions on employers through higher contribution assessment ceilings and increased levies on mini and midijobs. In conclusion, he assessed that securing high-quality care without causing contribution rates to spiral upward depends entirely on whether the federal government possesses the courage to undertake a genuine structural overhaul.
