Well, at least this should assure their editorial support for funding Medicaid and Medicare.

Lol.

Medicare's hospice benefit is pretty awesome -- or at least it was around seven years ago. It made a big difference to my entire family (in terms of respite, medical, and administrative support) during the final months of my mom's illness. Gregoire's budget had Washington's Medicaid hospice benefit on the chopping block in early 2011 -- as if just the fact of being terminal didn't suck enough already -- but the legislature gave it a reprieve. Hopefully, Washington will have the wisdom to include hospice care as an "essential benefit" under the State's ACA regs. Maybe the Washington Post will come out with some compelling, totally non-self-serving articles on how valuable it is to patients...

Oh, and a special shout-out to the hospice team at Providence, which I hope Swedish has kept intact.