Bavaria faces sharp rise in care-dependent population and pushes for staffing and funding reforms

During a Tuesday cabinet meeting, Health Minister Judith Gerlach announced that Bavaria's count of residents requiring long-term care is set to approach one million by 2050, with a clear upward trend starting in the late 2020s. She emphasized that financial resources alone are insufficient without a corresponding boost in qualified personnel, pointing to a roughly ten-percent rise in general nursing apprentices and a larger increase in one-year care-assistant trainees this year.

Gerlach praised the "future-proof" care structures created under the PflegesoNah programme, which added or modernised thousands of care places between 2020 and 2025, and urged the federal government to adopt a more equitable financing scheme in the pending care reform. The cabinet also addressed heating policy, with Economy Minister Hubert Aiwanger advocating for wood fuel, which supplies about 23 percent of the region's heat, and urging households to stock up on firewood.

Green Party critics dismissed the push as unrealistic for renters and warned that rising pellet prices could undermine affordability. Aiwanger reassured that Bavaria's electricity supply remains highly reliable, with only a few minutes of outage expected annually.