Agreement on care reform: The coalition is pursuing clientele politics – once again

Once again, more money is being taken from the younger generations. On Wednesday, the federal government agreed on a serious nursing care reform. In the future, childless people should pay even more into statutory nursing care insurance than contributors who (already) have a child. Currently, childless people aged 23 and over have to pay a supplement of 0.6 percent of their earned income to long-term care insurance in addition to the general contribution rate of 3.6 percent. This surcharge is now to be increased to 0.9 percent.

Of course: That's not a lot of money, based on the German median income (around 54,000 euros gross annual), just under 40 euros per month. Nevertheless, this additional burden primarily affects the younger generations; their age cohorts have the most childless people. While in the 1970s the average age of a woman becoming a mother for the first time was 24, today the average age is 30.4 years. On average, men become fathers for the first time at the age of 33.3. This means that the proportion of childless thirty-somethings is also high. Only around half of women now between 33 and 38 years old have a child.

It is clear that there is a lack of money for care and that it has to come from somewhere. It is also clear that the care reform will of course hit those who need care or have relatives to whom this applies the worst. The nursing care funds will have to save billions of euros in the next few years, aid for the lowest level of care will be canceled, and stricter criteria should apply to the distribution of the levels of care. This means that fewer people will be entitled to benefits from long-term care insurance.

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Nevertheless, the political decision that childless people, especially members of younger generations, will have to pay more into the care fund in the future demonstrates once again: This government apparently does not care about the problems of younger people. It is particularly younger people who pay extremely high rents for small apartments and shared rooms. Who sometimes have to shell out half their salary for an apartment, meaning they are unable to build up any assets and therefore no retirement provision themselves.

It is younger people who are hit harder by the rising cost of living, as they are less likely to benefit from collective agreements with regular salary increases. It is young people who do not have secure employment contracts and are stuck in unfounded fixed-term contracts that the Merz cabinet wants to expand even further.

There would have been a way to make the care reform fairer: if the private care funds, which have lower expenses due to their healthier membership structure, would pay compensation into the statutory care insurance. But for that to happen, the CDU would have had to make policies against its own clientele.