Quality meals ... when my dad had his heart surgery his first solid meal was a low quality, high-fat hamburger on a plain white bun (no tomato or lettuce, just ketchup), salad with enough ranch dressing for 4 salads and a plastic container with peaches soaked in syrup (ie. HFCS). I was horrified.

I mentioned it to his cardiologist who, to his credit, went on a rant about how the food seems to be especially chosen to sabotage any work he does.

Perhaps it is more nuanced than that: getting the patient to eat after surgery is probably the most important thing - and perhaps burgers are the way to do that for the majority of patients?

A quick Google of keywords (weight loss after cardiac surgery) shows papers with sentences like "Patients who lost weight faced a significantly increased risk of mortality than those who experienced no changes or gained weight after surgery", and "We conclude that obesity confers a survival advantage in the setting of the CABG surgery", "While various large-scale randomized controlled studies evaluated different post-operative nutrition strategies in rather mixed cohorts of critically ill patients, only few small clinical studies specifically investigated its effects in cardiac surgery patients. In these studies, malnutrition has been reported to increase morbidity and mortality after cardiac surgery".

I agree it is obvious that good food is best, but or hard to know what the actually constraints are. I think it is unlikely the NHS will put on a nice entrecôte de boeuf!

It would be "nuanced" if it was ground chuck on brioche, but it was terrible quality in addition to unhealthy. That's why I was clear it was low quality, crap food; not comfort food.

Which country are you in? The mention of HFCS suggests USA, but [USA based?] companies have pushed that in to a lot of foods in UK now it seems so ...?

Canada. We share a lot of food supply chains with the US, including access to artificially cheap HFCS.

Sorry, but "citation needed"? High fructose corn syrop is just not a thing outside of North America.

Not at all, but there is I understand some subsidy system that favours using corn syrup as a sweetener - and in mass production it can be added to almost any food to make it sweeter.

As USA founded/headquartered companies have taken over more of UK food production it \appears\ that this has been coincident with the increased usage of HFCS to sweeten traditional UK foods. That appearance is so strong that it is a stereotype in UK society "this tastes sickly sweet now, oh yeah, Kraft took over so they probably put corn-syrup in it".

It might just be that as USA capitalism has optimised squeezing more money out of lower quality food by adding cheaper ingredients other countries have optimised for financial profit in the same way?

I've never heard similar issues raised against the food industry of other countries; even so, perhaps it's an unwarranted stereotype?

I'm open if you want to try and change my view?

[Hmm, reading that back it's no longer clear to me what you are saying, I read your post as if the second sentence were a question; apologies if I erred.]

Yeah that's actually messed up, he should have received a different menu of food that won't exacerbate the very issues he just had surgery for!

There are superbeneficial (US-IRS) tax laws that let corps shelter money in fine art. Tax advantage is the prime reason you see fine art hanging in office hallways....

That doesn't remove the actual benefit for people either.

Hospitals will have all of those things the moment people are willing to pay for them. Some hospitals have those now - for the sort of hospitals that predominantly serve patients with excellent insurance for high margin activities or who are paying cash. Eg, top tier specialty surgical centers and dedicated cancer centers.

Most patients can’t afford their meds, or any type of hospital stay. They’re not paying a premium for extra square footage and art on the walls.

Most patients can't afford the organised health insurance scam industry. That's where most of the money goes.

Ending that scam and asking patients to add an extra percent or two on their bills to pay for good food and a good environment would barely be a rounding error compared to the banditry that forces them to pay outrageous and unjustifiable fees for common meds and routine medical services - never mind specialised care.

Most health insurance has a profit margin in the vicinity of 10%. They introduce many problems into the healthcare market, but if you think they’re the reason people can’t afford healthcare, you are mistaken.

I don’t mean to sound snarky here, but: if you believe you can boil down one of the most fractured, complex, and heavily regulated industries (really, set of inter-related industries) in the country to a single “that group of assholes over there cause all the problems” bulletpoint, you have missed 99% of the story.

The wages of all the people working in health insurance don't appear as profit, but if you removed the industry all that money - and the rents - would be released. To recapitulate it's not just the profit, it's the entire sectors costs that you release by removing the need for that sector.

There would be incidental costs, like more unemployment, and possibly some more admin within the healthcare system; though from what I hear it would more probably reduce admin costs on the healthcare end too.

> Most health insurance has a profit margin in the vicinity of 10%.

Well, that's partially because they're legally required to spend 80% of premiums on patient care.

The end result is that higher premiums mean higher profits out of that fixed percentage of margin they're permitted to skim, so they don't fight cost increases too much - until people outright stop being able to afford the premiums, increases in them benefit the insurer's bottom line.

> Most health insurance has a profit margin in the vicinity of 10%. They introduce many problems into the healthcare market, but if you think they’re the reason people can’t afford healthcare, you are mistaken.

People see a lot of money flowing into insurers and hear about large profit numbers. That makes it feel like they're the obvious problem.

I've (anecdotally) noticed that people and candidates tend to refer to insurance costs, vs costs of the underlying. My perception is that they want "medical insurance" to really be a subsidy, not classic insurance.

Interestingly, this comment can be read as either pro-socialist or pro-free-market. In either case, it's plainly true. The cost has to be covered _somehow_. We should find a way to make it happen.

Thank you.

My politics aside - which on healthcare include both socialism and free market capitalism, to different degrees in different contexts - I really was just trying to communicate the straight fact, and I’m very appreciative of your recognition of that. In these discussions, it often seems like people assume that healthcare and associated amenities are created from thin air, and when less than ideal, are so due strictly to malice or indifference. Which couldn’t be further from the truth.