Does Medicare Cover Hospice?

Yes. Medicare covers hospice care in full for people who qualify, under Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance), and there is no deductible for the benefit. To use it, you elect hospice — you sign a statement choosing comfort care for your terminal illness instead of treatment meant to cure it — and a doctor certifies that you are terminally ill. Coverage has no lifetime dollar limit.

Yes — Medicare Part A covers hospice

Hospice is care that focuses on comfort and quality of life rather than curing an illness, for someone who is terminally ill. According to Medicare.gov, it is one of the services covered by Part A, and the Medicare Hospice Benefits booklet (CMS Product No. 02154) confirms there is no deductible: Medicare pays your Medicare-approved hospice for the care in your plan.

As of July 2026, the benefit works the same way in every state, and the details on this page reflect the current edition of that booklet. If you have a Medicare Advantage Plan, the hospice benefit is still paid through Original Medicare — you do not have to leave your plan to use it.

Who Medicare covers for hospice

You can get the Medicare hospice benefit if you have Part A and meet a short list of conditions: a hospice doctor and your regular doctor (if you have one) certify that you are terminally ill with a life expectancy of six months or less; you accept comfort care instead of care to cure your illness; and you sign a statement choosing hospice. These rules are set out on Medicare.gov.

Eligibility is based on prognosis, not on a particular diagnosis, so hospice is not limited to any one illness. We walk through the requirements in full in who qualifies for hospice.

How you start: electing the hospice benefit

Starting hospice is a deliberate choice called an election. You sign a statement choosing hospice care instead of other Medicare-covered treatments for your terminal illness and related conditions, as the benefits booklet describes. In plain terms, you are choosing comfort-focused care over treatment aimed at curing the terminal illness. There is no waiting period and no separate enrollment window for hospice: once you qualify and decide to, you can elect the benefit and it begins.

That choice is narrower than it can sound. As MedPAC explains in its March 2026 report to Congress, when a beneficiary elects hospice they "agree to receive palliative care for their terminal illness and related conditions under the hospice benefit and forgo care related to the terminal illness outside of hospice," while "Medicare continues to cover items and services unrelated to the terminal illness." Your other health problems remain covered under regular Medicare rules.

You also choose which Medicare-approved hospice provides your care, and you can keep your own doctor as the attending physician who works with the hospice team. Election is voluntary: a hospice cannot be assigned to you without your consent, and you can change your mind. Electing hospice does not lock you in — you keep the right to stop it, covered further below.

What Medicare's hospice benefit includes

Depending on your terminal illness and related conditions, your hospice plan of care can include a wide range of services. The Medicare Hospice Benefits booklet lists them:

• Doctor services and nursing care
• Prescription drugs for pain and symptom control
• Medical equipment (like wheelchairs or walkers) and supplies (like bandages and catheters)
• Hospice aide and homemaker services
• Physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology
• Social worker services and dietary counseling
• Grief and loss counseling for you and your family
• Short-term inpatient care and short-term inpatient respite care

A hospice nurse and doctor are available around the clock, and the hospice — not you — coordinates the care. That coordination — arranging the visits, equipment, and medicines your plan calls for — is itself part of what the benefit provides.

Medicare covers this care wherever you live. Most hospice care happens at home, but the benefit also applies in a nursing facility, an assisted-living residence, or a hospice inpatient unit. When symptoms cannot be managed at home, Medicare covers short-term general inpatient care, and it covers short-term inpatient respite care to give a family caregiver a rest. These different settings and intensities are what the levels of hospice care describe, and all of them fall under the same benefit.

What you pay

For the covered care itself, there is no deductible and no per-visit charge. Only two small costs can apply, both from the benefits booklet:

• A copayment of up to $5 per prescription for outpatient drugs for pain and symptom management.
• 5% of the Medicare-approved amount for inpatient respite care.

Medicare does not pay for room and board where you live. A full breakdown is in how much hospice costs.

What the hospice benefit does not cover

Electing hospice narrows Medicare's coverage in one specific way. As MedPAC's March 2026 report describes it, a person who elects hospice agrees to "forgo care related to the terminal illness outside of hospice." In practice, that means Original Medicare will not separately pay for treatment aimed at curing the terminal illness once you are in hospice, since the goal of the benefit is comfort rather than cure.

Two other limits are worth knowing. Medicare does not pay for room and board where you live, and it does not pay for care from a hospice that your own hospice team did not arrange. None of this restricts comfort care — everything in your plan of care for the terminal illness and related conditions is covered, and unrelated conditions stay covered under regular Medicare. If your goals change, you can revoke hospice and return to curative treatment, as described below.

How long Medicare covers hospice: benefit periods

Medicare covers hospice in benefit periods rather than for a fixed number of days. According to the benefits booklet, you can get hospice for two 90-day benefit periods followed by an unlimited number of 60-day benefit periods. There is no lifetime dollar cap.

At the start of the first period, your doctors certify that you are terminally ill. At the start of each period after that, the hospice medical director or hospice doctor must recertify you. In addition, the CMS Medicare Benefit Policy Manual requires a hospice physician or nurse practitioner to have a face-to-face encounter with the patient before the third benefit period and before each period after it.

The practical takeaway is that living longer than six months does not end your coverage. As long as a hospice doctor recertifies that the illness remains terminal, hospice continues. We cover this in depth in how long you can be on hospice.

Stopping or changing hospice care

You are never trapped in hospice. If your health improves, your illness goes into remission, or you decide you want to pursue curative treatment again, you always have the right to stop — to revoke — hospice care, the benefits booklet states. If you were in Original Medicare when you stopped, you simply continue in Original Medicare, and if you become eligible again you can return to hospice at any time.

This flexibility is one of the least understood parts of the benefit. Electing hospice is a choice you can revisit, not a one-way door.

How many people use the Medicare hospice benefit

Hospice is a mainstream part of Medicare, not a rare or last-ditch service. MedPAC's March 2026 report to Congress reports that in 2024 more than 1.8 million Medicare beneficiaries received hospice services from about 6,700 providers, and that Medicare hospice spending totaled $28.3 billion.

That same report notes that the share of Medicare decedents who used hospice rose to 52.9% in 2024 — more than half. That share has climbed steadily year over year as more families learn the benefit exists and as hospice has become a routine part of end-of-life care rather than an exception. Length of stay varies widely from person to person: MedPAC puts the average lifetime length of stay at 99.6 days and the median at 19 days in 2024, a reminder that some families come to hospice with months of support ahead and others only days. Either way, the benefit is there when it is needed.

See which hospices actually serve your address. Enter your ZIP code to find every Medicare-certified hospice that covers your neighborhood, sorted by quality and ownership — so you can move from "is it covered?" to "who's closest and best?"

Find hospices near you →