When you go into most hospitals now, in Israel, you'll see that they pretty much all have shopping malls in the complex,. Usually you are made to go through the mall on your way in and out of the hospital. Kind of like the gift shop at the end of the museum tour - to leave you have to walk through the gift shop.

Often the prices in these malls are inflated. They also benefit from having a captive audience; The patients who might be able to walk around but cannot leave, along with the bored visitors who might be walking around while they spend too much time visiting their sick loved ones.

The news reported yesterday that Minister of Health Yaakov Litzman is working to get the Coffix chain of low-priced coffee shops to open their shops in hospital malls.

I am not sure why this needs the intervention of the Minister of Health, rather than simply being a business decision (of Coffix weighing the potential volume of business versus the high rental and other overhead expenses, but if he can get them into the hospital malls it will offer big savings to the people wandering the halls of the hospitals all day long...