BSW on health and care

The BSW wants to end 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 providers. In the party's view, medical treatment must not serve profit.

The BSW wants no more sales to private companies. This applies to hospitals, nursing homes, water, and energy. Cities and towns should run these services. Nonprofit groups can also run them. The BSW says health should not be a business.

The platform criticizes that the state has handed tasks to profit-oriented hospital groups since the 1970s and that investors are now buying up medical practices, especially dental and dialysis practices. Municipalities and nonprofit providers should take priority in health, nursing care, and housing. Companies that are not solely profit-driven would also be acceptable. The BSW rejects privatizing municipal and state tasks, especially where lower wages are a risk. Hospitals, water, and energy should return to municipal ownership.

The BSW wants to secure outpatient care in rural areas through municipal medical centers, polyclinics, and community nurses. It also calls for expanded emergency medical services and a new medical university to counter the doctor shortage.

Rural areas will soon lack doctors. The BSW wants towns to run health centers there. Community nurses should return. Emergency services should improve. Saxony should get a new medical university.

Hospitals, practices, and the various health professions should cooperate more closely, in part to avoid duplicate examinations. The platform treats emergency medical services as an essential public service to be expanded at a high standard. Telemedicine should supplement treatment but not replace in-person doctor visits. Staff should receive collectively agreed pay and better training. Private insurers should not get access to patient data.

The BSW wants to reduce supply shortages of medicines, vaccines, and medical devices. It proposes an early-warning system, larger stockpiles, domestic production, and stricter quality controls.

Sometimes important medicines are missing. The BSW wants earlier warnings about shortages. Wholesalers should keep more stock. Local companies should make key medicines themselves. Medical products should be checked more carefully.

The platform points to recurring supply problems that harm patients. Shortages should be made transparent and wholesalers should hold larger stocks. The domestic pharmaceutical industry should produce important medicines itself. The BSW sees gaps in the oversight of medical devices and calls for better controls.

The BSW wants to expand care for mental illness and start prevention early. It plans resilience training in schools, more community psychiatric services, and a statewide crisis service. The platform points to rising sick leave and early retirement.

More and more people have mental health problems. The BSW wants to help earlier. Students should learn to cope with stress. There should be a crisis service everywhere. Counseling should get money from the state.

Companies should build up occupational psychotherapy expertise, and so-called talking medicine as well as further training for doctors and psychotherapists should be promoted. Community-based social psychiatric care should expand statewide to keep illnesses from becoming chronic. Counseling for patients and relatives should be developed at the municipal level and secured through state grants. The crisis service should be attached to existing structures. The BSW also wants to counter the stigma around mental illness.

The BSW wants to limit what nursing home residents must pay themselves: the amount should not exceed the average pension. The federal and state governments should reorganize the financing. The platform calls nursing homes a poverty trap because of rising costs.

A place in a nursing home costs a lot. The BSW wants to limit costs for residents. Nobody should pay more than an average pension. The federal and state governments should cover the rest.

According to the platform, residents currently pay an average of 2,778 euros a month, after increases of 24 percent and another 14 percent in prior years. Long-term care insurance covers only a limited share of costs. The cap would cover shares for meals, the training levy, rising wages, and investment costs. The money would come from surpluses of a citizens' long-term care insurance and from tax revenue.

The BSW wants to bundle all of the state's nursing care rules into one state care law. Municipalities would be required to carry out care planning paid for by the state, and in-person counseling would be available everywhere. The goal is caring for people in their familiar surroundings.

The BSW wants a new law for nursing care in Saxony. It should collect all care rules. Cities and towns must plan for care. The state pays for that. In-person advice should be available everywhere.

The law would bring together legal rules, requirements, and funding options while cutting red tape. Counseling on care benefits and local services should reach those affected and family caregivers and supplement digital information. To counter loneliness in old age, the platform envisions community-based, intergenerational offerings such as municipal housing projects with accessible apartments at affordable rents. Municipalities would receive state support for this. The BSW wants to discuss additional benefits for people needing care.

The BSW calls for a halt to hospital closures and wants to preserve all 76 hospital sites in Saxony. The state should fully cover hospitals' investment costs. In the party's view, the federal hospital reform could have severe consequences.

The BSW wants no hospital in Saxony to close. All 76 sites should stay. The state should pay for hospital investments. Some hospitals should get new tasks.

The hospital reform should be implemented so that no site is lost, which requires time for hospitals to reorient. Not every hospital would offer the full range of medical services in the future. Hospitals should only have to earn their operating and staff costs themselves. In structurally weak regions, hospitals would be converted into basic-care providers and medical care centers.

The BSW wants to use the Bundesrat (federal council of the states) to advance a citizens' insurance that everyone pays into. Long-term care insurance would come first. The platform calls the current system two-tier medicine that must be overcome.

Today there is public and private health insurance. The BSW wants one insurance for everyone. Every citizen should pay into it. This should start with nursing care. Saxony should back this in the federal council.

Saxony should support Bundesrat initiatives for a more solidarity-based health and care system. The platform criticizes that publicly insured patients wait a long time for specialist appointments while practices favor private patients because of fee rules. Surpluses from a citizens' care insurance would help limit out-of-pocket costs in nursing homes.

To tackle the doctor shortage in rural Saxony, the BSW wants to create a separate medical university in the long run. In the short term, scholarships for medical students who commit to working in Saxony should be greatly expanded.

Rural Saxony does not have enough doctors. So the BSW wants to found a new medical university. It also wants more scholarships for medical students. A scholarship is money for your studies. In return, these doctors later work in Saxony.

The new university would be added to the medical faculties in Leipzig and Dresden. The Sächsisches Hausarztstipendium (Saxon GP scholarship) should be greatly expanded, supporting students who work as general practitioners in Saxony after their specialist training. The program also considers such scholarships useful for specialties where a shortage is expected. The state should help doctors set up practices in rural areas. The program argues that measures so far have not fixed the shortage.