Linke on health and care

The Left wants to carry out the proposals of the "Pakt für Pflege" (Pact for Care) with state money from a new fund. Home care, counseling and prevention are to be strengthened, especially in sparsely populated areas. At the federal level, it wants care to stop being an investment object for private funds.

The Left wants a state fund for care. Care at home should get more support. Rural areas should also have enough care. Private investors should no longer make profit from care.

Neighborhood help, everyday support and local networks are to be expanded, and care insurance money that requires co-financing is to be drawn in full. Care support centers would add housing advice and dementia services. An investment program would support renovating nursing homes so that residents' own contributions do not rise faster. The state care law is to be revised and municipal care planning strengthened. Also planned are a state dementia strategy, a prevention program and a "Violence-Free Care" network modeled on Berlin.

The Left wants to strengthen prevention and health literacy, especially among children and young people. First-aid courses in schools are to be expanded and prevention programs made available across the state.

The Left wants people to stay healthy. Children and young people should learn more about health. Schools should offer more first-aid courses. Prevention programs should be available everywhere in the state.

The platform wants to expand first-aid courses in schools and roll out an already tested first-responder program statewide. Health education is meant to encourage healthy eating and less sugar. Prevention programs are to improve in quality and be accessible across the state, with a focus on young people. Schools, clubs, municipalities and health care facilities are to work together more closely.

The Left wants to keep and attract more medical staff in the state because many doctors will soon retire. Foreign qualifications are to be recognized faster and young professionals supported in a targeted way.

Many doctors will retire soon. So the Left wants to attract more skilled workers. Degrees from other countries should be accepted faster. Young people studying medicine should get more support.

Qualifications of foreign professionals in medical and other health occupations are to be recognized more quickly, alongside a welcoming culture. The platform rejects targeted recruitment from countries that have staff shortages of their own. Rural doctor quotas are to be used fully, and assistant degree programs and scholarships for people studying abroad are to be created. Students in their practical year are to receive pay they can live on. In rural areas the “Schwester Agnes” model of nurses relieving doctors is to return, and health navigators are to guide patients.

The Left wants to organize medical care across the state as one connected chain, especially in rural areas. Hospital sites are to be kept during the hospital reform, supplemented by health centers and telemedicine.

The Left wants good care everywhere in the state. This matters most in villages and small towns. Hospitals should stay open. Health centers and video appointments should be added.

Model regions are to test how doctors' offices and hospitals can cooperate and be paid across the current divide between outpatient and inpatient care, drawing on networks such as “Haff-Net.” Ambulance and patient transport is to be organized according to need and paid for with little red tape. Regional health centers and midwife centers are to be supported and telemedicine used statewide. Access to psychotherapy is to become faster and simpler. People with long COVID and ME/CFS are to get better care, pharmacies and counseling services are to be kept, and patients' rights strengthened.

The Left wants to prevent profits from operating hospitals and have public money go only into care. In the platform's view, health must not be a commodity; the system is to be financed on a solidarity basis and geared to the common good.

The Left wants no profits from hospitals. Tax money should only pay for care. The party says health is not a product for sale. Everyone should pay together for health and nursing care.

According to the platform, hospital financing should serve the common good rather than the highest possible returns. Health care and nursing care are to be paid for on a solidarity basis. As a matter of principle, the Left wants to remove health care from the profit motive and create long-term prospects for doing so.