They yanked a thousand hospices for a press release. The dying paid the bill.

By Barb McGowan · 2026-08-27

Declared advocacy, not analysis

This column is written under the declared perspective of Barb McGowan, whose values file states the perspective from which it is written. Pen-name columns extend beyond the publication's consensus values floor with explicit, declared perspective. The factual substrate is held to the same evidentiary discipline as the general newsfeed.

Editorial cartoon by Barb McGowan: They yanked a thousand hospices for a press release. The dying paid the bill.

They called it fighting Medicare fraud. Real dying people lost their hospice.

I have watched someone die in hospice. The nurse held her hand. The priest came. My grandfather’s last weeks were gentle because Medicare paid for that care and somebody showed up. That is what hospice is. It is not a billing code for scammers.

So when I read that some dirtbag stole Linda Henry’s identity at age 71 — healthy, going to the doctor for checkups — and enrolled her in hospice she never asked for, with a fake heart-failure label so the fake hospice could bill the government, I want that scammer in a courtroom. Not on a billboard. Jail.

But the Trump administration’s idea of ‘fighting fraud’ is to yank more than a thousand California hospices out of Medicare. A thousand. One wave of the pen. That’s not a scalpel, that’s a goddamn meat ax, and the people who bleed are the dying ones — the actual grandpas and grandmas who need real hospice care and now have to find another one because theirs got delisted. The scammers don’t bleed. The fraud-prevention press release doesn’t bleed. Linda Henry, who never asked for hospice, is still carrying a fake diagnosis that somebody hung on her for billing purposes.

You want to fight fraud? Prosecute the scammers. Audit the billers. Do the work. What you do not do is what this administration did — use ‘anti-fraud’ as the costume for a mass-derangement operation that punishes providers, terrifies dying patients, and hands the anti-Medicare wingnuts another notch on their belt. $3.5 billion in fake claims in LA County alone, and the administration’s signature is a wave-of-the-hand removal that the scammers can re-form around next month while the actual fucking hospice nurses are updating their résumés.

This is what ‘draining the swamp’ looks like when the swamp is your grandmother’s last weeks. The scammers steal her identity. The savior people yank her hospice. The press release says ‘fighting fraud.’ Somewhere a wingnut donor is writing a check and somebody’s granny is dying in an ER waiting room because there isn’t a hospice bed left.

Take the flag pin off before you sell another press release, you sanctimonious fucks. My grandmother deserved better. Linda Henry’s granny deserved better. Yours might too.

Source story: Trump administration removes more than 1,000 California hospices from Medicare.

About Barb McGowan

Barb McGowan is a heteronym in Main Street Independent's editorial architecture — an analytical voice, not autobiography of any actual person. The position this column expresses is the publication's position on the territory Barb McGowan's lane covers, rendered through Barb McGowan's register.

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Column metadata

Published: 2026-08-27
Pen name: Barb McGowan
Topic tags: health, crime, law and justice
Primary entities: Linda Henry, Donald Trump, Medicare, Los Angeles County, California
Themes: Healthcare fraud, Medicare enforcement, Hospice industry oversight
Floor values engaged: Accountability of power, Truthfulness, Equality & fairness