The SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag wants to amend the federal government’s draft law on long-term care insurance in the Bundestag. The group’s health policy spokesman, Christos Pantazis, announced this ahead of the upcoming deliberations, as tagesschau.de reported on Wednesday, 21 October.
“We want to stabilise long-term care insurance financially without hollowing out the solidarity-based character of our social state,” Pantazis said, according to tagesschau.de. For that reason, the draft would be carefully examined during the Bundestag deliberations. Affordable care required an “effective cap on personal financial burdens, the protection of important care benefits and sustainable relief for municipalities in their spending on help with care”. A fair financial balance between social and private long-term care insurance was also particularly important to him.
The Care Reorganisation Act has already been approved by the cabinet. According to the report, the draft law is due to be on the Bundestag agenda in two weeks. Among other things, it is planned that contribution rates for people without children will rise by 0.3 percentage points on 1 January 2027. Under the plans, classification into a care level could in future be handled more strictly.
SPD and Union had negotiated for hours in September over the draft by Health Minister Carsten Linnemann (CDU), including through the night until shortly before the cabinet meeting. Most recently, Manuela Schwesig and Anke Rehlinger had also commented on the reform. The SPD heads of government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saarland are calling, according to tagesschau.de, for a revision of the draft and criticise, among other things, cuts to benefits. Pantazis welcomed this: “The two minister-presidents raise important questions that are also of central importance to us as the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.”
According to the report, the position of the two SPD-led states is also reflected in a draft resolution for the Conference of Minister-Presidents taking place this Thursday. At the same time, an expert commission of health experts and lawyers is to work out proposals for a far-reaching care reform in the coming months and present them by the end of January 2027 at the latest.
