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Enough of Pseudo Solutions: The State Must Provide Long-Term Care Insurance


>> Read the full position paper in pdf

The crisis in long-term care insurance, which had long been expected, is already here. Unless action is taken immediately, tens of thousands of long-term care insurees will be left without a solution already at the beginning of 2025. Recently it was reported that not a single insurance company entered a bid issued by Clalit Health Services to provide collective long-term care insurance. Their decision to stay out means that, as of January 2025, the bulk of Israel’s elderly population, which is mostly enrolled in Clalit, will be left without long-term care insurance. In fact, all long-term care insurees will be affected, as the law allows health fund insurees to switch from one fund to another and retain insurance continuity.

This is yet another crisis in the area of long-term care insurance in Israel, which as Zulat cautioned in the past, requires a comprehensive solution, primarily in the form of a long-term care insurance law integrated into the National Health Insurance Law that dispenses with the commercial insurance companies.

In the face of a years-long problem, Israeli governments have over the past two decades repeatedly come up with provisional solutions for providing this basic social service based on the insurance companies, whose goal is to maximize profits. To this day, the Capital Market Authority and the Finance Ministry’s Budget Department continue to adhere to these interim arrangements, even though they have proved to be pseudo solutions that are unfair in the short term and totally inapplicable in the long term.

Zulat’s position is that long-term care must stop being the stepchild of health care and that the time has come to promote a comprehensive national solution and include it in the universal basket of health services. To this end, it is imperative to enact a national long-term care insurance law, raise the health tax, and merge the budgets of the Health Ministry and the National Insurance Institute to enable full public funding for long-term care in the community.

Only a national long-term care insurance law integrated into the National Health Insurance Law will cover the difference between current funding by the National Security Institute and the actual needs of the population. Such a law should raise the payment toward health insurance by the general public and encourage those who wish to do so to save toward their future long-term care needs. It should also examine the manner in which long-term care is provided, including the policy on employment and remuneration of caregivers, and the advancement of collective housing solutions that allow for living within the community rather than just at home, as is customary around the world.

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Dr. Maha Sabbah Karkabi

 

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tel Aviv University (2015), a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London (2015-2016), a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University (2016-2017), and a postdoctoral fellowship Ph.D. at the Humphrey Institute for Social Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2018-2020).
Dr. Maha Karbahi’s areas of interest focus on the connection between social change, family behavior, and gender inequality in societies in the process of change and specifically in Palestinian Arab society in Israel. Her research draws attention to the study of family life and employment, using a combined “ethnic lens” and “gender lens” and paying attention to the perspective of Palestinian Arab women, a group characterized by intersections between multiple marginal locations, which over the years has remained hidden from the research eye. Dr. Karkabi-Sabah’s research is published in professional journals and chapters in scientific books that are considered pioneers in family research, work, and gender equality.

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Prof. Frances Raday

Professor Emeritus in the Lieberman Chair in Labor Law, in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University and serves as a full professor in the College of Management’s academic track, where she also serves as chair of the graduate program and as honorary president of the Concord Center for International Law Absorption. Radai was a member of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council on discrimination against women. In addition, she is a prominent and feminist human rights activist.

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Dr. Rawia Aburabia 

Faculty member of Sapir Academic College’s School of Law, received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research deals with the interface between law, gender, minorities, and human rights. Has published in leading journals on the subject of the matrimonial laws pertaining to Muslim women in Israel. Her book Under the Law, Outside Justice: Polygamy, Gendered Citizenship, and Colonialism in Israeli Law is expected to be published as part of the Gender Series of Kibbutz Meuhad Publishing House.

Dr. Aburabia has extensive experience in international human rights and public law. She has worked as a jurist for the Association for Civil Right and has been invited as a specialist to address such international forums as the United Nations and the European Parliament on the subject of indigenous communities and minority rights. She has interned with Human Rights Watch in Washington DC, and has been a member of the executive board of Amnesty International. In 2018, she was selected by the magazine Globes as one of the 40 most promising young persons in Israel under the age of 40.

 

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Ron Kessler

With over two decades of experience in the field of digital content, Ron has participated in numerous political and social campaigns. He helped run the digital activity of senior public officials, and worked in various NGOs. Ron is a fundamentally optimistic man, who believes that Israel can be changed and so can people. Lives in Tel Aviv.