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
How is that Medicaid’s fault? Why isn’t the title something like “Medicaid providers buying unhealthy food with federal funds”
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.
Unfortunately, I will not be at all surprised if right-wing outlets take that headline and run with it as a general criticism of Medicaid.
It’s an irresponsible way to word a headline if they want to avoid that.
This entire comment thread is based off someone who clearly thought this was just some sort of food subsidy program and not nutrition based… so I totally agree it will be taken wrong.
Spot on.
in that sense, agreed
Right, but the title doesn’t even mention a company. Why.
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/
