The hpfp piston / roller assembly can be removed for inspection very easily on these cars (in like 10 mins). I predict that in a very short time, aftermarket companies will specialize in re-coating hpfp pistons with extremely tough anti-friction materials and offer re-coated pistons on an exchange basis if Bosch doesn't offer individual parts for the hpfp.
A person could do a quick check of the housing bore with an inside micrometer or bore gauge and a quick visual inspection of the cam lobes to make sure that the cam isn't torn up, insert a pump piston with improved coatings, put it back together and be good to go (probably for the life of the car 400k+ miles). If it makes you sleep better at night, you could pull the pump piston every 50k miles or so and see how the coating is holding up.
Seriously. This issue is way easier to deal with than failed cams on P.D. cars.
The issue with inspecting periodically is that we know that one tank of "bad" fuel can lead to failure quite quickly and we don't know what is "acceptable wear" and what isn't. So, a 50k, 40k, 30k or even a 20k mile inspection is likely not going to "catch" a failure. Inspection every say 500-1000 miles is likely not practicable for most but is likely what would be needed to "catch" a failure before it happens.
Perhaps the latest Rev. 3 pump already has such a coating. I can't believe that Bosch and VW have not been addressing the root cause of these failures. Look at the new Ford documents recently posted on NHTSA on their 6.7? liter diesel with respect to ITP (internal transfer pump) and HPFP failure. And BTW, Ford has seen HPFP failures in Mexico that they blame on poor lubricity of PEMEX fuel. There is also analysis of fuel survey data for many countries similar.
There's also the possibility that a potential failure could be detected in enough time that allows the car to operate in "limp" mode (perhaps lower pressures) so the driver has enough time to pull off the road prior to the car stalling. If the driver is given sufficient time to react while driving rather than the sudden stalling of the vehicle, safety is likely no longer an issue. It certainly takes time for the significant amount of metal contamination that we've seen pumped throughout the fuel system before stalling. There's likely changes in operational data that can be used to assess the health of the pump and potential for failure.
So, IMHO an extended warranty (10 /120), software update for safety (which also should lessen the likelihood of the catastrophic failure sending metal everywhere), and a Rev. 3+ pump might be a possible solution and thus make this a non-issue going forward but for those that want a HPFP to last 250k+ miles. But one could replace their original pump when doing the TB at 120k miles with the latest pump or simply continue to drive on their original pump knowing that it is less likely with a software update that they will suffer an $8k repair if their pump fails.