"The utopians create a government money sugar fountain". Not for profit hospice is not a "government money sugar fountain". I'm suspect you didn't mean that, and it's entirely possible you did.

The only ones regarding it that way are your capitalist entrepreneurs, folks out for a quick buck, squeezing those dollars out of patient care.

Medicare requires that if one has a hospice program 80% of it must be home hospice. Residential hospice gets only those with medical issues which cannot be handled at home. About half of our patients get better, not well but better, and go home.

And at least 7% must be volunteers, or unpaid staff.

Hospice is used very often instead of hospital care. That's where the growth is originating. The average cost of a hospital bed is around $3000 per day. The cost of our hospice bed is very close to $300 a day. So this "money sugar fountain" is at the expense of vastly more expensive other forms of care.

Now, like space exploration, private companies are jumping onto this "money sugar fountain" for profit. The hospice for whom I volunteer has been there for 25 years, and I don't think anyone associated with it regards it as a "money sugar fountain". And the newer entrepreneurs, capitalists all, the folks jumping into the for-profit market, I suspect they do. The for-profit folks have subverted referral sources, the physicians who refer patients and the people who monitor compliance. They have created marketing departments with budgets for "gifts" to physicians and nursing home managers. Classic, usual capitalism, coming out of the funds needed by patients.

Nope, in this case, it's not a government cash cow, if the patient is kept in mind. I suppose it can be for the ruthless.