Save Seniors from a Telehealth Blackout!
When the Trump administration loosened telemedicine restrictions for Medicare patients in March 2020, the move was seen as temporary.
The COVID-19 pandemic was in its early days.
Making it easier for seniors to seek care virtually — whether through a video conference or an old-fashioned phone call — seemed like a straightforward way to maintain access during a crisis.
Five years later, telehealth has become an integral part of our nation's healthcare infrastructure. In many cases, it can be a more convenient, lower-cost, and equally effective alternative to in-person care.
Lawmakers have heard as much from their constituents --- and have extended Medicare's telehealth flexibilities repeatedly, most recently through the American Relief Act, which was signed into law in December of 2024.
That extension expires at the end of this month. The funding bill released by the House this past Saturday includes an extension of telehealth flexibilities for six months.
Unless lawmakers act right away to protect access to telehealth services under Medicare, seniors could soon find themselves facing a different kind of public health emergency.
The pandemic jump-started the adoption of telehealth.
In 2020, telehealth visits among Medicare fee-for-service patients increased 63-fold, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Part of the pivot to virtual care was borne out of necessity.
Since seniors were especially vulnerable to the novel coronavirus, many were content to receive care remotely, especially once hospitals were overrun with people sick with the virus.
But even after the pandemic had waned, telehealth usage among Medicare beneficiaries remained high. The ability to consult with a medical professional from the comfort of one's own home has been life-changing for many seniors.
This is especially true of patients who live far away from their nearest healthcare provider, or who are physically encumbered due to illness, injury, or disability.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis, estimate that telehealth eliminated the need for 53.7 million miles of travel --- or about 113 trips to the moon --- in the first two years of the pandemic.
Finding specialist care is also easier when the location of a particular specialist is no longer a barrier to access.
And in many cases, the quality of care delivered using telehealth is on-par with the in-person alternative.
A study published in September in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA, for instance, found that providing early palliative cancer care via telehealth had equivalent effects on patients' quality of life as care provided in-person.
The efficiencies created by telemedicine can result in significant cost savings — both for patients and health systems.
When the University of Pennsylvania's health system, Penn Medicine, analyzed the effects of its employee telehealth program, it found that virtual visits cost 23% less than physical trips to a doctor's office.
According to a study published by JAMA Network Open, another medical journal, telehealth services were estimated to have saved 11,600 cancer patients a total of $1.6 million in income they might have otherwise lost due to driving and visit time between April 2020 and June 2021.
Back in 2018, the Trump administration estimated that telehealth saved Medicare patients about $60 million a year in travel alone. And that was before these services exploded in popularity during the pandemic.
Telemedicine, in other words, has made it easier and less expensive to deliver a wide range of medical services without sacrificing quality.
And these practices and technologies have arrived at a moment in which Medicare desperately needs new strategies for containing costs.
Lawmakers need to recognize the widespread adoption of telehealth among seniors as a gift that shouldn't be squandered.
They can do so most directly by making telehealth coverage a permanent feature of Medicare. At the very least, they can extend the existing flexibilities before they expire at the end of the month.
Failing to take this step would deprive seniors of avenues for accessing healthcare they've come to depend on — and let a rare opportunity for sustaining and improving Medicare slip.
Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is The World's Medicine Chest: How America Achieved Pharmaceutical Supremacy — and How to Keep It (Encounter 2025). Follow her on X @sallypipes. Read Sally Pipes' Reports — More Here.
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