Commentary: Fraud is rampant, but good hospice care exists. Here's a guide to making the right choice

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Hospice fraud.Why do those two words appear in tandem so frequently?The short answer is money.The population of older adults is surging, a river of tax dollars is available to cover the cost of care, and legions of scammers and profiteers have lined the banks to pan for gold with schemes that include stolen identities and billings for patients who aren’t really on their deathbeds.Another explanation for the long-running, multibillion-dollar boondoggle is that despite exposes such as the one in 2020 by the late L.A.

Times investigative reporter Kim Christensen and then-colleague Ben Poston, California’s promised reforms are still, inexplicably, a work in progress.The Trump administration has singled out California for its failures, as reported by my colleagues Richard Winton and Hannah Fry, while also targeting other states.And meanwhile, Trump’s team and California officials are pointing fingers at each other for not doing their jobs as both sides announce arrests of multiple fraudsters.“California is the clearest current warning sign, but this is not simply a California problem.

It is a federal Medicare program-integrity problem and a state-federal oversight problem,” Sheila Clark, president and chief executive officer of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Assn., testified at a congressional hearing a few days ago.Another witness at the same hearing said she was denied Medicare coverage for a pickleball injury because she was an unwitting victim of stolen identity and had been enrolled in hospice coverage by scammers.California A California woman told lawmakers on Tuesday about her experience with hospice fraud in California.Clark, who was still fuming when I spoke to her after her testimony, was one of several people I reached out to with a question I’ve often gotten from readers since writing several years ago about hospice care problems both my parents d...