to think that meals in hospital shouldn't be free?

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It just seems a bit strange. You'd have to pay for it if you were at home. The cost of feeding hospital patients must be astronomical, and the food (in my quite extensive experience) is pretty crappy. Cheap, badly cooked, and in many cases unsuitable for specific dietry requirements.

Wouldn't most people be happy to pay for their meals, and in return expect to be served appealing, healthy food?

Obviously patients in for extended periods or those on benefits should be offered a free/heavily subsidised option.

It would require some investment to completely change the system - but surely it would save millions in the long-run?

What do you think?

YABU. We already pay for it. It's called National Insurance!

YABU. Not everybody has family on tap that could bring food in. Also, as mentioned before, you could prepare a meal for next to nothing at home if needed be - not the case in a cafeteria situation.

No-one goes to hospital for their own entertainment. Surely eating is a basic human right, and having to prove you are entitled to free food when you're struggling to survive is wrong.

I work for the NHS and the amount of ludicrous admin that already exists is completely out of control. The amount created by patients being CHARGED for food would be farcical, and lets face it..... it would always be wrong..

The argument for it being free is this:

Often, the people admitted for slightly longer-than-average stays are infirm, elderly people who may not have the money, the means, or are sadly just not capable anymore of cooking balanced nutritious meals for themselves. They may have no family at all and when they do become ill, their long term lack of proper nourishment causes their condition, which can start out as something very minimal, to exacerbate to the point where hospitalisation is neccessary. I have lost count of the amount of times that a patient has told me that what they have just eaten has been their first 'proper' meal in weeks. This can lead on to discovering a persons home situation has become unmanagable and even dangerous. Then the nursing staff can make referrals to the agencies/social services, who's jobs are to provide care packages, and put in place measures to prevent this situation continuing when the patients return home. Thus, hopefully, restoring that person's quality of life.

I would hate to think of the same patients eventually being found in an extremely poor, and irrepairable state at home, simply because they knew they couldn't afford to go into hospital and pay for their meals, and so let their health deteriorate

Sometimes the bigger picture has to be looked at.

You have already paid for them with your taxes and imagine how much it would cost to administrate.......

YABU

Can't believe this thread even exists?!

For one how would you make this work? Would you charge them before they ate? What if they were an accident victim and weren't carrying a wallet?

Or would you charge them after? Can you imagine being a grieving relative and being sent a bill for hospital food?

We could charge for sheets as well.
pillow rentage?

if they want a bath ......

we could charge per suture,

What about air??? could we charge for breathing??

YANBVU for all the reasons already mentioned.

However - I have had to stay in hospital for a few days and nights with my dd several times over the years and have seen lots of parents blatantly taking the piss with regards to the free food.

When I say piss-taking I mean they have been explicitly and firmly told, usually with the aid of an interpreter and / or laminated translation that the food is for the children, only to find them creeping back later when the nurses have gone and trying it on again with a smirk. At every single meal time.

These people are almost always couples too, so each of them are trying and usually succeeding to blag breakfast, lunch and dinner while I have to carry my autistic son up or down five flights of stairs and then for ages along terrifying corridors to the hospital shop leaving dd on her own own (because dh has to work) in her bed just for the privilege of paying £7.99 for a soggy wilted sandwich.

This is of course, just my experience but it's this sort of behaviour which leads to unworkable ideas like those expressed in the OP. I wish I could say that from my observations in East London that the few are in danger of spoiling things for the many but sadly no, people like me are the few.

I do think all hospital patients should be fed, especially children and especially when I've seen their parents basically stealing meals from the desperately ill children of other people.

YABU.

And while we're (not) on the subject, parking at hospitals should be free too.

I remember ds1 being in hospital and I had to stay with him as dh was working - dh came everyday with a meal and sandwiches etc for me and snacks for ds......when the nurse said I could use the staff canteen at a subsidised rate - dh explained that as I was pregnant with ds2 he wanted to be sure I ate,the nurse was lovely and said the hospital would provide my meals as I was pregnant,I didnt actually take them up on it but it was a very thoughtful practice.

One of the most ridiculous OP's I've seen for a while.

Hospital treatment, and therefore the meals you are served while you are there, are not 'free', they are paid for by taxes and National Insurance. Ensuring patients have a balanced meal is essential to patient care, and no of course you shouldn't have to pay cash for your hospital meals!

(now, ensuring that the patients eat the meals, when they are incapable of lifting a fork to their mouth is another issue entirely)

werewolf - sadly, if parking at hospitals were free there would be no spaces for the patients.

Most hospitals do seem to have a voucher system for long term patients, but it's never easy to find out about, and this definitely needs addressing.

YABU. Food is a basic necessity.

In Greece (certainly in my local hospital) there is no toilet paper, patients have to bring their own sigh.....not really relevant to the thread but i remembered it when a poster above mentioned toilet paper.

werewolf there is no visitor car park in dd's hospital in London at all, it's deep in the built-up East end so it's the road rates or the local supermarket at £50-£100 for the day unless you are in and out in two hours, which never happens.

I don't mind paying for parking at the local hospital though.

I agree with you, OP. Food in hospitals is rubbish, so they could make them loads better if you paid for them. Maybe the very, very poor could have them for free if they are homeless or on benefits or whatever, but as you say, yes, people pay for food at all other times so why not in hospital?

As for the argument "you don't choose to be ill in hospital so you shouldn't have to pay for it"...er... WTF? How many examples of things you don't choose but still have to pay for? You don't choose to have periods but you still have to buy tampons; prescriptions for antibiotics etc when you're ill at home; glasses if you're short sighted etc etc etc

YABU

We do pay for the food it's called tax.

The food is awful anyway, the only edible stuff they have is from the Halal menu and thats all heated up TV dinners in a plastic tray from some company. I can't see them giving you decent stuff if you paid as I think the main problem is the fact it gets microwaved within an inch of it's life and then carted around on a heated trolley for half an hour before you eat it.

If they charged, people would just bring stuff in or order take away.

The point of taxes is that we can then use various state-run services (through choice or necessity) without having to pay for them a second time.

... and I already do "expect (people) to be served appealing, healthy food" in hospital. Unfortunately this expectation is not always met, but I don't think that means we should pay twice.

and a further hospital food nonscence is thefact that so much of it is binned. piles of it. every meal time.

it may be crap but if it is left over do you think the nurses/ward staff should be allowed to eat it? while having their break (ha ha ha ha)?

sackable offence in the trust I work for.

and yes - i was bloody joking abut payeing for beds per hour.

Right. So people in intensive care, barely conscious, no family - well let's let them starve since they can't sign the food bills.

And as a previous poster said, as long as food is provided it's apparently okay if there is nobody to ensure that your frail relative actually eats their food, as long as it is put out for them. Disgraceful.

I really hope it isn't true but decades ago I was told by a visiting American that my (then) scruffy "goth" style in his country would mean that I would bleed to death waiting for medics if I was in an accident because passers by would think I couldn't afford emergency treatment so it would be kinder / better to let me die. Based on how I was dressed, even though millionaires daughters dressed as I did when I was very young.

Funnily enough, my mates who did go to the USA on the credit cards of rich Daddies were told certain rules which marked them out as insured no matter how they were dressed.

I used to sneer at preppy Americans as a teenager wearing their wealth on their sleeves quite literally but now I know why!

OP, are you going to charge those who require supplemental/tube feeding because they are inconcious/unable to eat?
Those who are dismissive of hospital food as "slop" are obviously not aware of what many people eat at home due to infirmities or appalling economic circumstances. I find it deeply worrying that 3breasts, who apparently works in a hospital, says that families should feed patients, showing no understanding that many people in hospital have no support network at all.

YANBU. People should also be charged for using the loo when staying in hospital.

You could probably pay every nurse in the countrys salary through the revenue raised.

But it could lead to people with no spare change pissing the bed.....

unconscious (

I get the feeling that underlying the OP is the idea that people in a hospital are on some sort of jolly.

How do you charge people who are throwing up a lot, and losing their food? Or people who can only eat very small portions (or will you have some kind of sliding scale for nurses to monitor?). People who have been told to try to eat something but the smell of the food when it arrives makes eating impossible? I could obviously go on and on.

Why are there so many threads around at the moment that seem so completely devoid of compassion and lack any imagination of what it must be like for others in difficult situations?

good quality nutrition in hspital saves money - well nourished patients get better sooner.

so YABVU - false economy.