State of Play on Telehealth

Dozens of bills were adopted in the last Congress (116th). Several more have been adopted in the 117th Congress; some of the bills introduced were previously put forward in earlier sessions of Congress.

The challenges facing passage of comprehensive legislation making permanent many of the requirements lifted under pandemic authorities are:

• Cost and impact on the Medicare Trust Fund
• Program integrity (aka fraud, waste and abuse) concerns
• Differences of opinion on removing the Medicare requirement which calls for a patient to be seen first by a provider before being seen via telehealth