The financial discounts that will apply to elderly care from 1 January must be scrapped. Layoffs and bankruptcies in the healthcare sector are imminent. That is why about a thousand northern healthcare workers, volunteers and informal carers are traveling to The Hague today to take action.
“Those discounts are absurd, when you consider that more and more elderly people are joining due to the aging population,” says Roeli Mossel of the North Dutch Cooperative of Care Organizations. She expects that care organizations will be able to deploy fewer employees in the care sector as a result of the cuts and that there may be redundancies. “Reports from accountants who have reviewed all annual accounts of healthcare organizations throughout the Netherlands show that a large number of bankruptcies will even arise in the healthcare sector.”
Outgoing Minister for Long-Term Care, Helder, announced before the summer that long-term care will receive an additional 4.3 billion euros over the next five years. That is 700 million less than was assumed. In addition, there will be more than 4 percent less budget to fund healthcare buildings and wage costs for healthcare organizations will rise sharply due to new collective agreements.
Meanwhile, the number of elderly people is increasing due to ageing. According to the Ministry of Health, approximately 1 in 21 people will be over the age of 80 in 2020, in 2040 this will be 1 in 12. Care for the elderly will therefore have to change. Mussel sees that too. “We have to innovate in elderly care anyway. But we cannot take care of twice the number of clients with half the staff we now have. So don’t cut us financially now. Then we will soon be busy reorganizing and firing employees, while we cannot be busy with the necessary innovations.”
According to Mossel, firing employees seems to be one of the few options for making cutbacks. “The wage costs that care organizations have are about 70 percent of their budget. That is one of the few places where there is room to cut costs. Ultimately, these cuts mean that the most vulnerable elderly fall between the cracks. People who are socially and are already struggling economically. We are committed to that.”
A petition has been set up to convince the outgoing minister and the House of Representatives not to continue with the financial cuts. 33,000 people have now signed it. “We’re going to offer that today,” Mossel looks ahead. “In addition, there will be a number of speakers, including politicians.”