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During the pandemic, many of us started paying more attention to the country's broken healthcare system.

Ava Kaufman, an investigative reporter at ProPublica, was no exception.

I looked into assisted living facilities and the plight of their residents during the pandemic

and became interested in seeing what was going on in Los Angeles where I live with the hospice

boom here and realized that there was a much larger and longer and even nationwide story to tell

about these practices and just how entrenched they become across the country.

Since the 1980s, end-of-life care known as hospice has been paid for by the government.

These days, half of all Americans opt into hospice care at the end of their lives.

When done right, a hospice care is an amazing service and there's really nothing else like it in

the healthcare system because you're receiving access not just to doctors and nurses,

but also to social workers, to clergy, of your denominational choice,

...