Suz Redfearn
“Breaking news: The Trump administration just announced that Medicare will stop covering telehealth starting April 1. … We need to stand up to these Medicare cuts.”
Rep. Ro. Khanna (D-Calif.), in a TikTok video posted Feb. 20, 2025
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) posted a Tiktok video on Feb. 20 saying he had “breaking news” concerning the destiny of Medicare protection for telehealth visits, which permit sufferers to see well being care suppliers remotely from their houses.
“Breaking news: The Trump administration just announced that Medicare will stop covering telehealth starting April 1,” Khanna stated. “We need to stand up to these Medicare cuts.”
The identical day, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services posted a document on-line titled “Telehealth” that stated, “Through March 31, 2025, you can get telehealth services at any location in the U.S., including your home. Starting April 1, 2025, you must be in an office or medical facility located in a rural area (in the U.S.) for most telehealth services.”
CMS didn’t reply to requests for remark concerning the publish. The White House additionally didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The telehealth profit was first put in place as a short lived Trump-era addition to Medicare protection throughout the covid-19 public well being emergency.
Khanna’s assertion took on extra significance main as much as the specter of a authorities shutdown, however late final week Congress averted one by approving a stopgap spending invoice.
The expiration date for the profit has been recognized since December, when Congress prolonged protection round telehealth by means of March 31. The roughly 90-day reprieve was a part of a compromise after then-President-elect Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk criticized a sweeping, end-of-year legislative package deal that may have, amongst different issues, continued these advantages for 2 years.
Their opposition compelled Congress to go a stripped-down model of the end-of-year invoice. Telehealth’s two-year extension, included within the preliminary invoice, turned collateral harm.
Last week, simply because the clock was ticking down, House Republicans handed a spending bill for the remainder of the fiscal yr that features one other extension of telehealth flexibilities — this one lasting by means of September. The Senate then cleared the invoice for Trump’s signature, with the assist of 10 Democrats, together with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Regardless, the two-year extension proposed in December — or a everlasting extension, as Khanna has urged — seems to be unlikely.
“President Trump and Elon Musk blew up the continuing resolution last December that would have extended these telehealth authorities by two years,” Khanna instructed us through electronic mail. “Trump should work with Congress to extend telehealth coverage for Medicare beneficiaries.”
It wouldn’t come free. Permanently extending telehealth for medical care beneath Medicare may value taxpayers about $25 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated. The CBO calculated 5 months of expanded telehealth protection as costing $663 million, and calculated that that may whole virtually $25 billion by means of fiscal yr 2031 if spending remained stage, which it could not do.
Also, the company and the Government Accountability Office have raised considerations about fraud and overuse of the profit, amongst different potential points.
Congress made Medicare protection of behavioral well being providers delivered remotely everlasting in December 2020, however left other telehealth benefits hanging on by a string. Instead, lawmakers prolonged them for brief durations throughout the practically two years because the public well being emergency formally led to May 2023.
“Now, once again, we’ve got another deadline where, if Congress doesn’t act, our flexibilities go away,” stated Kyle Zebley, senior vp of public coverage for the American Telemedicine Association.
And if, sooner or later, the telehealth advantages aren’t prolonged, is it honest to explain the coverage change as a minimize? Khanna, for example, plans to introduce the Telehealth Coverage Act, which might require Medicare to cowl seniors’ telehealth providers.
Politically talking, it’s a robust query when attempting to leverage public assist — and politicians in each events typically accuse their opponents of “cutting” federal advantages after they make modifications to packages.
“Khanna is overly dramatic,” stated Joseph Antos, a senior fellow emeritus on the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative suppose tank.
If the availability expires, Antos stated, “this is not a Trump cut.”
But beneficiaries might need a special expertise. Since the early days of the pandemic — 5 years now — millions of patients have come to depend on telehealth for his or her medical providers. That profit, even with one other momentary reprieve, would nonetheless be in danger.
According to CMS, greater than 1 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries used digital care providers as of 2023. And, after the Trump administration green-lighted telehealth for Medicare recipients in 2020, many personal insurers did the identical.
Overall telehealth claims rose from fewer than 1% of all business claims earlier than the covid pandemic to a peak of 13% in April 2020. Now they stand at shut to five%, in response to Fair Health, a nonprofit that tracks well being care prices.
Those within the telehealth business are optimistic concerning the present extension. The Trump administration, they are saying, has been sending encouraging indicators — even highlighting its earlier assist of telemedicine in its reality sheet on the launch of the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission.
“We’ve been sweating bullets,” Zebley stated. “But it’s been nerve-wracking before. I think we’re going to get it done.”
Antos stated, nevertheless, that after the extension within the House-passed spending invoice, Medicare’s telemedicine advantages might be lifeless.
Our Ruling
Khanna stated, “Breaking news: The Trump administration just announced that Medicare will stop covering telehealth starting April 1. … We need to stand up to these Medicare cuts.”
The assertion is partially correct, as a result of the Trump administration introduced the March 31 sundown of Medicare telehealth visits, and a few beneficiaries who have been utilizing that profit may see it as a “cut.” But the declare lacks key context that the expiration date was set by Congress, not the Trump administration.
After Khanna’s declare, Congress prolonged entry to telehealth protection by means of September.
Based on info that was out there on the time, we fee Khanna’s assertion Half True.
Our Sources:
Rep. Ro Khanna’s Feb. 20, 2025 TikTok video.
The American Relief Act, 2025.
Vice President J.D. Vance’s X post on behalf of himself and President Donald Trump on the year-end legislative package deal, Dec. 18, 2024.
One of a flurry of Elon Musk’s X posts deriding the federal government’s year-end legislative package deal, Dec. 20, 2024.
Email interview with Rep. Ro Khanna’s workplace, March 3, 2025.
H.R.1968 — Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025.
H.R.133 — Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021
Phone interview and follow-up texts with Kyle Zebley, senior vp of public coverage for the American Telemedicine Association and government director of ATA Action, March 3, 2025.
Email interview with Joseph Antos, senior fellow emeritus for public coverage analysis on the suppose tank the American Enterprise Institute, March 8, 2025.
A Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services publish CMS publish titled “Telehealth” that features info to recipients about Medicare telehealth advantages ending April 1, 2025.
The journal Primary Care, “The State of Telehealth Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic,” April 25, 2022.
CMS, “Medicare Telehealth Trends,” Jan. 1, 2020 and June 30, 2024.
“Fiscal Considerations for the Future of Telehealth,” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, April 21, 2022.
H.R. 2471, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Congressional Budget Office, March 14, 2022.
“Medicare and Medicaid: COVID-19 Program Flexibilities and Considerations for Their Continuation,” U.S. Government Accountability Office, May 19, 2021.
Preprint: “Telehealth and Outpatient Utilization: Trends in Evaluation and Management Visits Among Medicare Fee-For-Service Beneficiaries, 2019-2024,” March 6, 2025.
Preprint: “Association Between Telehealth Use and Downstream 30-Day Medicare Spending,” Feb. 11, 2025.
Ro Khanna’s press release on the telehealth invoice he’s introducing.
“Annual Number of Users of Online Doctor Consultations Worldwide From 2017 to 2028,” Statista Market Insights, March 15, 2024.
ATA Action letter to Congress, Jan. 13, 2025.
Make America Healthy Again fact sheet, Feb. 13, 2025.
CMS, “Medicare Telehealth Trends Report,” October 2024.
