BSW on health and care

The BSW wants specialized outpatient clinics at universities in Saxony-Anhalt. They are meant to improve care for people with post-COVID, post-vaccination syndrome and ME/CFS.

Some people stay sick for a long time after COVID or a vaccine. There should be special clinics for them. These should open at university hospitals in the state. People with ME/CFS should get help there too.

ME/CFS is a severe chronic fatigue illness. The program points to reports of serious vaccine side effects and considers long-term effects insufficiently researched. The clinics are meant to improve medical care for those affected.

Saxony-Anhalt is to approve new international pandemic agreements only after thorough review. The BSW rejects handing over sovereign powers without oversight by parliaments.

Countries make treaties for future pandemics. Saxony-Anhalt should check such treaties carefully first. Parliaments should keep control. The state should not give up rights without that control.

Before approval, four things are to be clarified: who is responsible, how decisions are made, who pays and what democratic oversight looks like. The program ties this to its review of COVID policy.

The BSW wants the state to expand Pflegestützpunkte (care advice centers) and secure municipal short-term and day care. People who care for relatives are to receive targeted support so that caregiving does not lead to poverty.

The BSW wants more care advice centers. People get advice about care there. Day care and short-term care should also stay. People who care for relatives should get help and money. Caring should not make anyone poor.

State programs are to promote grants, pension bonuses and relief services for family caregivers. Municipal short-term and day care is to be secured. The program links the demand to gender equality because women do most of the caring for relatives and are, in its view, less well protected in old age as a result.

The BSW wants to merge the state's university hospitals back into the universities alongside the medical faculties. Outsourced hospital subsidiaries should be brought back in-house or fully bound by collective wage agreements. Planned hospital construction should be financed on a sound basis.

University hospitals are legally separate from the universities today. The BSW wants to join them again. Hospital subsidiary companies should return to the hospitals. Or they should pay union-agreed wages. New hospital buildings should have secure funding.

According to the program, the current separation causes friction and duplicate structures and makes joint planning of staff, finances and development harder. Outsourcing is said to have led to worse working conditions, avoidance of collective agreements and divided workforces, so subsidiaries should be reintegrated or at least fully covered by collective agreements. Construction projects worth about two billion euros are planned at both university hospitals through a special fund. The BSW considers financing that partly relies on additional loans taken by the hospitals unsustainable given existing deficits and calls for realistic, transparent planning.

The BSW wants a critical review of the trend toward requiring university degrees for professions such as nursing, physiotherapy or midwifery. The party does not want traditional vocational training routes to be pushed aside.

Some health jobs now more often need a university degree. Examples are nursing and midwifery. The BSW wants to review this. Regular job training should stay. Students often get no pay, but trainees do.

The program says academic qualifications in these fields can make sense but wants existing vocational routes kept and strengthened. It points out that students in these subjects usually receive no training pay. Qualification, it argues, must neither select by social background nor endanger the supply of skilled workers. The BSW names social mobility in training and study as its goal.

The BSW rejects subordinating civilian health care to military priorities in a crisis. The party criticizes that large sums are made available for rearmament while public social services face cuts.

The BSW does not want hospitals to be part of military plans. Even in a crisis, civilian patients should not come after the military. The party says there is much money for weapons. Health and social services get less. That should change.

According to the program, the health system is increasingly being drawn into security and military planning. The BSW counters that health is a human right and neither a commodity nor part of military logic. It calls for a turnaround toward care oriented to the common good.

The BSW calls for a Bürgerversicherung (citizens' insurance) that everyone pays into, to end differences between publicly and privately insured patients. Benefits should be standardized and health insurers merged. The party rejects using surcharges and co-payments to steer demand.

The BSW wants one health insurance for everyone. Everyone should pay into it. People who earn more should pay more. There should be fewer health insurers. All insurers should cover the same services.

Care should be equally accessible to all regardless of income, origin or place of residence. Employers, the state and the insured should share the financing, and contribution increases should not fall one-sidedly on particular groups. The BSW also wants to cut costs through leaner administration. Easy access to psychotherapy should be kept and expanded, and prevention should get more weight.

The BSW wants a state law obliging hospitals and health facilities to pay collectively agreed wages, including in outsourced subsidiaries. The aim is for insurance contributions to go into care and working conditions rather than profits of private operators.

The BSW wants a new law for hospitals. All workers there should get union-agreed pay. This also applies to subsidiary companies. That should make these jobs more attractive again. Money from insured people should not leave as profit.

The law would cover every hospital employee, whatever the form of employment. Nurses and medical and therapeutic staff are to get better working conditions, predictable hours and fair pay. Combined with earmarked funding, the BSW expects this to reduce the shortage of nursing and skilled staff.

The BSW opposes hospital closures and further privatization in health care. Hospitals that are no longer worthwhile for private operators should promptly be taken back into public ownership.

The BSW does not want hospitals to close. It also wants no more privatization. Privatization means private companies take over public facilities. If a hospital no longer pays off for private owners, the state should take it over.

The program criticizes hospital closures, bed cuts and centralization as well as the growing influence of private hospital and practice chains and financial investors. It points to the state's duty to secure hospital investment and statewide coverage, which the party says has been neglected for years. As a model for integrated, non-profit care, the BSW cites the polyclinics of East Germany, whose principle should be brought back into debate in a form adapted to current standards.

The BSW wants long-term care insurance that covers care costs in full and is paid for mostly out of tax revenue. Nursing home costs should not push people in need of care into poverty or overburden their relatives.

Care in a nursing home costs people a lot of their own money today. The BSW wants insurance that pays all care costs. The state should put in a lot of tax money. People who need care should not have to use up their savings automatically. Relatives should not pay too much either.

Long-term care insurance should cover growing demand over time and be financed on a solidarity basis, with everyone contributing according to their means. The state should contribute more; the party rejects placing the burden one-sidedly on the insured. Clear rules should define what costs are reasonable, and savings accounts should not automatically be used up. For care workers, the program demands fair wages, reliable hours and better training and further education.

The BSW wants a digital portal showing free places in nursing homes and day care across the state. It also wants more specialized facilities, more independent advice and less red tape for applications.

The BSW wants a website for care. It shows free places in nursing homes and day care. There should be more homes for people with dementia. There should be more advice on applications. Applications should become easier.

The portal is also meant to help day care, which the program says is often underused and financially at risk even though it lets people stay longer in their own homes. More dementia centers and suitable nursing home places for people with mental illness and behavioral problems are planned. Red tape is to be cut, for example through a supra-local social assistance agency modeled on the KSV in Saxony. Independent social counseling is to help with applications.

The BSW wants to enlarge the public social-psychiatric service and create more therapy places because, in the party's view, demand for mental health support is rising sharply. Social institutions should get long-term funding instead of short project grants.

More and more people have mental health problems. The BSW wants more help for them. There should be more therapists and more therapy places. People should get an appointment faster. Social institutions should get lasting funding.

The social-psychiatric service is to act as a municipal link between outpatient care, hospitals and those affected. Study and training places for psychologists and psychotherapists should grow, licensing should become simpler, and urgent consultation hours should ease access. Because waits run to several months, planning of insurance-funded therapist seats should be adjusted, especially in rural areas. Municipalities should get reliable money for social work from the state and federal governments instead of one- or two-year grants. The program also lists more school social work and school psychology, prevention and support for volunteering as goals.

The BSW wants to make it more attractive for doctors to set up practice in rural areas and, where none can be found, to use municipal health centers and community nurses. Telemedicine and better-connected emergency services are to supplement care.

Rural areas lack doctors. The BSW wants to help doctors open a practice there. Where no doctor comes, towns should run their own health centers. Community nurses should visit old and sick people. Video appointments should also help.

Municipalities should support doctors with practice rooms, housing or organizational help, alongside investment in infrastructure and transport links. A statewide practice coordinator, working with the state, municipalities and the association of statutory health insurance physicians, is to secure the next generation of doctors. Telemedicine is to be expanded and older people trained in using it, for example through care services. Emergency services should be better connected and paramedics given wider powers to relieve hospitals. Medical practices should receive money for practice managers and for digitizing their administration.

The BSW wants the nationwide midwifery fee agreement revised so that freelance midwives receive the full fee for every woman they care for. The state is to counteract the pressure with its own funding programs and bonuses for setting up a practice. The aim is to preserve maternity care, especially in rural areas.

Midwives help women give birth. The BSW wants midwives to get full pay for every woman. The state should support midwives with its own money. That way, rural areas keep their birth care.

According to the platform, reduced pay when several women are cared for at the same time threatens the livelihood of freelance midwives. The rules on one-to-one care are to become more practical, and billing in five-minute units is to end. Salaried positions in hospitals and fees for midwives attending births there on a freelance basis are to become more attractive. The state is to set up funding programs and practice bonuses and use hospital financing to create more midwife positions and midwife-led delivery rooms. In the Bundesrat, Saxony-Anhalt is to push for a legal change to the fee structure.