Health Minister Carsten Linnemann (CDU) had originally announced the panel would be set up this Wednesday. Now it is not expected to convene until next week. That was confirmed in Berlin by Dirk Wiese, the parliamentary manager of the SPD’s Bundestag group. Wiese pointed to ongoing discussions about who exactly will sit on the commission.
The SPD is also demanding that the commission examine two specific points: a so-called care cap on costs in nursing homes, and a risk-structure equalisation running from private to statutory care insurance. Both questions, the Social Democrats insist, must be part of the commission’s remit.
The black-red coalition agreed last week to split the reform of long-term care insurance into two stages. In the first step, it passed measures meant to stop premiums for those in the statutory system from rising. Proposals for structural changes are now supposed to come from the new commission. It has until the end of January to deliver ideas on how to keep social long-term care insurance stable through the 2030s.
Within the federal government, officials point out that commissions on pensions and health have worked well in the past — unlike the joint federal-state working group on care. One reason, they say, is that both researchers and politicians sit on these commissions.
Source: Tagesschau
