[Good evening, all. Late start today. My apologies.]
We have moved into the universe of the ridiculous. There is a potential Jello crackdown coming for hospitals. Apparently, it has too much sugar. Jello. For hospital carts for snacks. This is stupid. Let’s hope Jell-O’s manufacturer sues them over it. We’re talking about the small sizes you see in six-packs in stores. With appreciation for Raw Story:
The Washington Post’s editorial board is warning Americans that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to dictate what hospitals can serve patients is a sign of dangers to come.
In a blistering editorial published Sunday, the board accused Kennedy of “using the coercive power of government to substitute his judgment” for that of doctors and patients, and called the crackdown “a warning to anyone who supports a full government takeover of health care.”
Oh, my lawd, have mercy. We do NOT want government in healthcare. Their views and medical views are quite different. The government in no way has the experience of medical professionals. They have a rep, that being RFK Jr *gag*, but they Should Not Interfere (capitalization intentional). This man is getting more and more dangerous to the medical field because he has no idea what he’s talking about!
Kennedy’s team is threatening to cut off federal funding for hospitals that serve items with too much added sugar, including Jell-O, fruit juice, Cheerios, and even Ensure protein shakes, the board wrote. The HHS guidance, issued this spring, urges hospitals to revise inpatient meal plans to align with new federal dietary guidelines.
“The leader of the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement thinks he knows better than medical providers and patients what’s best for them, and he’s using the coercive power of government to substitute his judgment for theirs,” the board railed.
He most certainly is! The man has *no* medical experience and “knows not of what he speaks”. What about the patients who can’t have sugar substitutes? Plus, the items he’s going after are absurd. It’s not as if they eat a lot of the listed items at once. There is no harm to having one (except I’m now pretending I know the medical field). If a patient was eating any one of those products all day, then there *might* be a cause for concern. Might. We would have to ask someone with the training and knowledge that we don’t have.
Kennedy himself has called the rules “essentially a federal mandate,” even as the board noted the order is “legally dubious.”
Kennedy confidant Calley Means has gone further, urging the public to rat out non-compliant hospitals through a federal complaint system intended for serious medical issues. Some physicians have likened it to a “snitch line” for serving soda.
The Post argued the crackdown contradicts the “Make America Healthy Again” promise of empowering individuals.
“Offering someone Jell-O is not medical malpractice,” the board wrote, slamming the crusade as government overreach.
Good heavens, no. The amount that hospitals provide is very small. It goes back to “how much do they eat?” Having the public snitch on them is asinine. He has no idea how big hospitals are and how many meals they serve for just one meal. And now some fool rants about sugar? Those small packages were very handy when I was in the hospital. They saved the nurses a lot of trouble. But I wasn’t eating them from the moment I woke up to the time I fell asleep. But outside the personal, anyone who has been in a hospital knows what the sizes are. They’re small. And RFK Jr now wants us to pay more money so hospitals can choose “proper” things. He can go jump. Give me a break!
See you soon!
Friends, I know everybody begs you for money. I promise you that of all of the outlets bugging you for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest working. We’re a bunch of old, disabled people, except one writer in his mid-50s. But the rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the ability to continue our quest to tell the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
Remember how, not that long ago, “conservatives” and GOPers were railing against Michelle Obama’s healthy eating initiatives which also called for institutions (mostly schools) to reduce levels of food containing excess sugar? Or the various cities (NYC comes to mind) that floated limits on what sizes of sodas could served and GOPers lost their collective doo-doo? At least those proposals were done with HEALTH AND SCIENCE in mind–not the paranoid ramblings from RFK junior’s diseased mind.
Oh, well said, sir! I do remember that. And it was done correctly. And Jr does have a diseased mind. lol.