Germany's 2027 nursing care reform caps costs and ties benefits to inflation
"We want to counter rising out-of-pocket costs while ensuring continued high-quality care," the CDU politician told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Tuesday edition).
According to information obtained by the FAZ, the nursing care reform planned for 2027 could include a provision to adjust insurance fund payments to care homes in line with annual inflation—a measure not currently applied on a regular basis.
"Indexing benefits must become more reliable for all parties by preventing their erosion and curbing the rise in out-of-pocket costs," Warken announced in the FAZ. "This could be achieved, for example, through permanent inflation-linked adjustments."
All stakeholders could plan around this mechanism, she noted. "And it would eliminate the recurring political bidding wars that aren't sustainable," the minister told the paper. She described the upcoming nursing care reform as a "comprehensive package," based on recommendations from a federal-state working group on the "Future Pact for Care," published in December.
The Scientific Institute of Private Health Insurance (WIP) has calculated the potential costs of the proposals. Indexing long-term care benefits to inflation and capping out-of-pocket care expenses at €1,000 per month ("care cost cap") would burden nursing care funds with €137.6 billion by 2040, the FAZ reports, citing an unpublished WIP study. That sum is roughly equivalent to the 2025 pension package, which had sparked rebellion from the "Young Group" within the CDU/CSU parliamentary faction.
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