State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman said in a special report published Sunday that Israel’s National Insurance Institute is now expected to exhaust its fund by 2035, nine years earlier than previously projected. He tied the deterioration mainly to the long-term-care reform, which doubled the number of eligible recipients and tripled annual spending without any actuarial backing, and noted that the prime minister has not brought the issue to government discussion even once in eight years.
The report says Israel’s aging population is growing fast, with about 1.2 million residents aged 65 and older at the end of 2024, or roughly 13% of the population, and about 2 million expected by 2050, around 15%. Englman examined government preparedness, long-term-care insurance, the health system, and welfare for older adults, in cooperation with auditors from several countries. He found that the share of elderly people receiving long-term-care benefits among old-age pension recipients has risen from about 16% to 30% since the 2018 reform, compared with an OECD average of 15%.
According to the report, the number of long-term-care beneficiaries jumped from about 180,000 before the reform to 392,000 today, while annual additional cost has climbed to about 14 billion shekels, far above the Treasury’s original estimate of 1.3 billion shekels. That pushed the National Insurance actuarial deficit higher and brought the fund’s depletion date forward by 6.3 years. Englman said the system relied too heavily on document-based assessments, which approved claims at a higher rate than in-person checks, and estimated that a lower-benefit gap versus health-fund assessments costs about 9.5 billion shekels a year.
The report also says the government has failed to hold the required annual discussion on National Insurance stability, the ministry of health has not delivered an operational multi-year plan for aging, and Israel still faces a chronic shortage of geriatricians. It found that 77% of people aged 60 to 75 had not prepared for retirement, that 82% of older adults who want to volunteer have not been exposed to relevant information, and that about one-third feel lonely while most were never asked about it by professionals. Englman called proper support for older adults a “moral and ethical duty” and urged a national, funded, multi-year plan, a clear lead authority, stronger prevention, and immediate stabilization of long-term care insurance.
