The financial situation of the long-term care insurance fund is apparently precarious due to the additional costs caused by the Corona pandemic. According to a media report, the providers of long-term care insurance are facing a gap of billions of euros.

The "Bild" newspaper reports that the nursing care insurance fund urgently needs a financial injection from the Federal Ministry of Finance. The newspaper refers to a letter from the Ministry of Finance to the Budget Committee.

According to the report, the letter states that "a payment of federal funds in the amount of 1,000,000 thousand euros to the social long-term care insurance system is necessary no later than the beginning of October 2021."

Accordingly, "the transfer of federal funds will avoid an otherwise imminent insolvency and keep the contribution rate to social long-term care insurance constant in 2021".To justify the request, the letter states, according to the report, that the measures taken during the pandemic to maintain nursing care must now be refinanced. Otherwise, the contribution rate could rise due to these "additional expenses."

The financing of long-term care insurance has long been a source of political controversy. Although Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) has already countered this with a reform, this does not go far enough for other parties and associations because of the rising care costs.

Consumer and patient advocates insist on reforms

Only in the middle of August the executive committee of the German donation patient protection, Eugen Brysch, had demanded more efforts. He told the German press agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur that long-term care insurance must finally become generation-appropriate, future-proof and fully financed.

The head of the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv), Klaus Müller, had also pointed to "exorbitantly increased costs" that many people could not cope with. At the same time, non-wage labor costs could not keep rising. "That's why we need an increasing share of tax revenue," he told dpa.

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At the end of last year, a good 4.3 million people were receiving benefits from the statutory long-term care insurance scheme - at the end of 2019, the figure was just under four million. In their election programs, some of the parties promise far-reaching financial reforms.For the upcoming federal election, the German Professional Association for Nursing Professions (DBfK) launched a "PflegOMat", which voters can use to check how the parties want to implement nursing policy demands. Nursing policy must be a central election criterion for all eligible voters - this has become clear at the latest as a result of the pandemic, it said.