Medicaid is paying millions for salty, fat-laden ‘medically tailored’ cheeseburgers and sandwiches
Medicaid is paying millions for salty, fat-laden ‘medically tailored’ cheeseburgers and sandwiches
The billing of Medicaid for dishes loaded with sodium and saturated fat raises questions about government oversight of meal delivery programs for people with serious illnesses.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17483630
They’re marketed as healthy, “dietitian-approved” meals and delivered directly to the homes of people seriously ill from cancer, diabetes, or heart disease: a Jimmy Dean frozen sausage breakfast sandwich, biscuits and gravy, a cheeseburger.
These are among the offerings sold by an Idaho-based company, Homestyle Direct, which is paid millions of dollars each year by taxpayer-funded state Medicaid programs to deliver what the company calls medically tailored meals. The company, which advertises delivering 7.8 million meals annually, has menus catering to customers trying to manage their cancer and diabetes, as well as “heart healthy” and “renal friendly” dishes.
However, multiple nutrition experts told STAT that many of Homestyle Direct’s offerings fall far short of what they’d consider medically tailored meals, a class of foods that have been proven to help those suffering from diet-related conditions improve their health and stay out of the hospital. Most also don’t appear to meet new voluntary accreditation standards crafted by medically-tailored meal providers.
“Homestyle Direct to me doesn’t look like medically tailored meals at all — it doesn’t even look like generally healthy meals,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.
Let's shame Medicaid folks. I'm all for criticizing some things and behaviors but this really feels like a conservative dogwhistle attack. If someone who's receiving taxpayer funded food at home wants a cheeseburger now and then, I'm happy that my taxes are giving them some comfort.
I thought the article would be about that, but it's about the quality of the food. It's supposed to be healthy food for sick people, but it doesn't meet the standards. That's a problem for patients with conditions that require controlled diets like diabetes
Yeah I read the article too. I want to see the available options for each category. Hospitals offer food options in different categories that have a range of healthiness that seems questionable too. Then again, folks in hospitals under tremendous stress should be able to treat themselves time and again. I hope they improve their menu, don't get me wrong.
Because it’s prescribed, it’s approved by Medicaid. If they approved eating grass as a treatment for thyroid cancer, I’d also be pissed. People trust their healthcare system to help them, because not everyone can be an expert. So it’s reasonable to expect Medicaid to only approve things for payment if they promote health. The cheeseburgers in question do not.
STAT News is generally well respected for medical/research news. I think the point of the article is to criticise the company for not making better foods/medicaid for not choosing a better company.
Dirty!! They just presented their services to our hospital too and were excited that our patients were going to have their nutritional needs met.... Obviously not....will share this with hospital teams to have them further assess before using these services
The company is Homestyle Direct and here is their website https://www.homestyledirect.com/
Most corruption happens via government Procurement
Citation needed.
Public procurement is the government activity most vulnerable to waste, mismanagement and corruption. The financial interests at stake, the volume of transactions and the close interaction between public and private sectors in the award of public contracts all pose risks to integrity.
https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/integrity-in-public-procurement.html
Note that OECD is the official global regime propaganda
This is common sense to anyone living and working lol