BSW on health and care

The BSW wants a comprehensive review of the COVID period, including through a commission of inquiry in the state parliament. People who paid fines over the vaccine mandate are to be compensated, and Brandenburg should approve a WHO pandemic treaty only under conditions.

The BSW wants to look closely at the COVID years. A commission in the state parliament should do this. It should also check vaccine side effects. People fined over the vaccine mandate should get money back. This should keep mistakes from happening again.

In the party's view, many measures had no scientific basis and did more harm than good. Data on vaccine side effects, for example from health insurers, are to be examined, including a comparison of illnesses and deaths among vaccinated and unvaccinated people. This is to happen at federal and state level. The BSW ties approval of a WHO pandemic treaty in the Bundesrat to an investigation of the WHO's role and the influence of foundations and corporations. People who were harmed are to receive rehabilitation, an apology and possibly redress.

The BSW wants to stop the privatization of health care, nursing care and other essential services. Hospitals, medical care centers and nursing homes should be run by municipalities or nonprofit welfare organizations, and profits from health care should be banned.

The BSW does not want companies to make money from illness. Hospitals and nursing homes should belong to towns or nonprofit groups. Profits from health care should be banned. Any surplus should go back into care.

The platform criticizes that the state has handed health care to profit-oriented corporations and that investors are now also buying up medical practices, especially dental and dialysis practices. It calls for a cost-coverage principle under which facilities are reimbursed for their actual costs. Any surpluses are to flow back into care. Municipal or nonprofit providers should also have priority in energy, water and housing. The party also wants to overcome what it sees as two-tier medicine.

The BSW wants to secure care in rural regions with community nurses, municipal medical care centers and polyclinics. It also calls for a stronger emergency medical service, a rural-doctor quota at the new Medical University of Lusatia, and better working conditions for staff.

Rural areas lack doctors and nurses. The BSW wants community nurses. These are nurses who care for people in villages. Towns should run their own medical centers. The ambulance service should get better.

Outpatient and inpatient care and the various health professions are to cooperate more closely, partly to avoid duplicate examinations. In sparsely populated regions, cross-sector care centers with attached short-term nursing care are to provide basic care, modeled on the hospital in Templin. The emergency service is to use a single statewide tele-emergency-physician system, and water rescue is to be added to the state rescue service law. For employees, the platform demands collectively agreed pay and better training. Elder care alone would need about 32,000 new workers by 2030. Rehab clinics are to be expanded with state funds.

The BSW wants to ensure that private insurance companies never gain access to patient data through the health system's digital infrastructure. The electronic patient record must not cause anyone disadvantages with insurance or at work.

Doctors store patient data digitally. The BSW wants to protect this data. Private insurers should never be allowed to see it. Nobody should be worse off because of their data.

According to the platform, digital processes should help patients and make work easier for those treating them. At the same time, the BSW warns against the "transparent patient." Protection against access by private insurers via the telematics infrastructure, the health system's data network, is to remain guaranteed in the future. The party supports shared use of the record by general practitioners and specialists as a way to reduce paperwork.

The BSW wants to expand community-based social-psychiatric care across the state and set up a statewide crisis emergency service. Counseling for those affected and their relatives is to be secured with state subsidies.

More and more people have mental illnesses. The BSW wants more local help for them. There should be an emergency service for mental crises everywhere. The state should give money to counseling centers.

The platform points to rising early retirements and sick leave due to mental illness. Children's resilience is to be strengthened starting in school, and companies are to build up expertise in workplace psychotherapy. The rise in conditions such as ADHD, depression and anxiety disorders is to be studied more closely, and affected families are to receive therapeutic and educational help. The party also wants to counter the stigma attached to mental illness. The crisis service is to be attached to existing institutions.

The BSW wants to cap what nursing home residents pay out of pocket so that it does not exceed the average pension in Brandenburg. In the long run, the party calls for a solidarity-based full long-term care insurance that everyone pays into, and more support for care at home.

A place in a nursing home costs a lot. The BSW wants to limit the cost for residents. They should not pay more than a normal pension. Later, one insurance should cover all care costs. All citizens should pay into this insurance.

According to the platform, a nursing home resident in Brandenburg pays 2,260 euros a month on average, 235 euros more than in January 2023. The federal and state governments are to reorganize the financing, with the state covering homes' investment costs as it does for hospitals. The BSW sees full care insurance as a first step toward a citizens' insurance. For home care, the "Pakt für Pflege" (care pact) is to be funded permanently, and care support centers as well as short-term, day and night care are to grow. The party rejects compulsory chamber membership for nursing professions. Against loneliness in old age, it proposes municipal, barrier-free housing projects.

The BSW wants no hospital in Brandenburg to close and rejects the consequences of the federal hospital reform. Loss-making hospitals are to be protected from insolvency by a rescue package, and the state is to invest sufficiently on a permanent basis.

Brandenburg has 66 hospitals. The BSW wants to keep all of them. Hospitals with money problems should get help. The state should give hospitals enough money.

In the platform's view, the federal health minister's reform would have severe consequences. Exceptions are to apply to Brandenburg hospitals where local care would otherwise be at risk. The rescue package is to come regardless of the reform. The platform accuses the state government of having long neglected hospital funding. Health promotion and prevention are also to become a central field of action, especially for socially disadvantaged groups.

The BSW wants to greatly expand the rural doctor program and increase scholarships for medical students who commit to working as general practitioners in Brandenburg. The new medical university in Cottbus should link physician and nursing training more closely.

Brandenburg is short of family doctors. The BSW wants to give more money to medical students. In return, they must later work as doctors in Brandenburg. The new medical university in Cottbus should bring doctors and nursing closer together.

The platform welcomes that the state will train its own doctors after 30 years. It criticizes that the Cottbus concept ties medical training too little to nursing. Together with BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, the university should pioneer a new division of tasks between doctors and nursing staff. The BSW also considers scholarships sensible for specialist fields where a shortage is foreseeable in the state.