Hi, it's Diane. On my mind, a big business of hospice.

One investor recently put it at a conference, hospice is the hottest thing going.

The movement came to the US in the late 60s, promising comfort and compassion at the end

of life. Today, half of all Americans die in hospice care, and what was once a sector

run by, not for profit organizations, has become a booming industry, one that some experts

say, who often prioritize his profit over patients. In this week's New Yorker, hope public

goes, Ava costs them traces how this happened. She points to lacks regulations, a Levedicare

payment system that can easily be exploited by companies looking to make a buck.

Ava, you start your piece with a woman named Marsha Farmer. Tell us who she is and why

she's so important to this story about hospice. Marsha Farmer is a very courageous, former

hospice employee who began in the industry in 2002. She was working in a kind of mid-sized

chain in Southern Alabama and had previously done sales and worked, you know, doing

sales in health care. And when she first came to hospice, to her, it kind of appeared

more like a calling than a sales gig. And this is something I heard throughout my reporting.

Former hospice employees say that, you know, there's nothing quite like this kind of work.

You only get into it kind of for the right reasons because it's so intimate. It's so, you

know, unglamerous even compared to the rest of health care. And it's so important. You

have to really believe in this, you know, humane and patient-centered mission to really

want to kind of spend time doing hospice work. And so Marsha was just completely drawn,

being able to, you know, spread the gospel of hospice, so to speak, in her community,

to help more people access this benefit of end-of-life care. And over time, as her company

grew bigger, it got acquired by a large nursing home chain, which was in turn acquired by

...