Bipartisan group calls for permanent access to telehealth for Medicare beneficiaries

US Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) led a group of bipartisan lawmakers to urge the US Department of Health and Human Services to work with Congress to ensure Medicare beneficiaries maintain access to telehealth.

Sen. Schatz is the Co-Chair of the Senate Telehealth Working Group and author of the Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies or CONNECT for Health Act,

In a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, the lawmakers underscored an urgent need to act on making pandemic-era telehealth flexibilities permanent.

Without action, those COVID-19 flexibilities which allowed more Medicare beneficiaries to access telehealth will expire at the end of the year.

In addition to Schatz, the letter was signed by US Senators Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), and US Representatives Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio).

“We urge you to work with Congress to ensure that all Medicare beneficiaries have permanent access to telehealth services before the temporary waivers expire on Dec. 31, 2024,” the lawmakers wrote. “Enacting permanent telehealth legislation will require collaboration between HHS and Congress in the year ahead. We urge you to communicate to Congress and the public the authorities, appropriations, resources and other supports needed to achieve this goal.”