SPD Secretary‑General Tim Klüssendorf sharply criticized the talks about cutting dental prostheses and sickness benefits. “Those are all demands we can do very little with, because in the end the people themselves have to pay for them” he said on RTL’s “Frühstart” and ntv. “So the goal has to be a fairer, more efficient system – that’s what we’re working toward”.
He added that the aim should be to avoid repeated increases in mandatory contributions. “We don’t want citizens to keep paying” the SPD politician explained. “On many benefits we simply can’t make large cuts because a lot of people rely on them. Take the care system, for instance, where out‑of‑pocket shares already reach thousands of euros”. He called for “absolutely solid‑arity financing”.
While he sees the SPD proposal for a health tax on all types of income as a “trial assignment” he is clearly for solidarity financing. “It’s still a long way to go before we can specify exactly which rules and exemptions would apply” he said. “We need to figure out how to protect small savers”.
Klüssendorf also pointed to changes in the labour market. Many business models are no longer built around large workforces but generate profits without needing many employees. “If we think about how we could include other types of income and earnings in our solidarity financing, that’s a line of thinking we are pursuing now and will continue to develop over the coming weeks and months”.
