news update: a decision was made about medicare telehealth benefits.
Is it possible that Congress saved the day?
A little over a month ago, I wrote about the scheduled end of most Medicare telehealth benefits, which was set to take effect today, April 1, 2025.
When I called Medicare about it, I learned that they were as confused as I was about what it meant. You can read about our conversation here:
medicare telehealth is set to expire in 38 days.
I discovered that as of April 1, 2025, I won’t be eligible for telehealth services unless I live in a rural area or meet a few other criteria that don’t apply to me. I am mostly homebound and rely on telehealth for the majority of my healthcare needs. This would be devastating. Here is the snippet from the Medicare
PAUSE FOR SUSPENSE.
Though I’ve been monitoring the news, I hadn’t seen any legislative updates about this in my daily news reading, so I resigned myself to transferring care to a primary care provider much closer to my house and waiting to see what happened at the last minute. When COVID hit our household last week, it slipped my mind.
Yesterday, my new doctors and I had our last scheduled telehealth appointment to discuss accommodations the office could provide for when I would be required to report to the office for my appointments. Of course, that appointment was canceled at the eleventh hour. When I made it last week, I remember saying, “It will be fine waiting until that day. What’s the chance that the appointment will get canceled on the same day my benefits end?” Sigh.
I spoke to the front office about our options, and that’s when they informed me that they had been told telehealth benefits had been extended! I was incredulous and tried to confirm what she said.
It was true. I was as happy as Baby Bill Freeman on a Sunday morning.
On the one hand, I’m embarrassed I missed it.
But on the other, there was only scant information online even when I scoured Google to confirm. Ritter Insurance Marketing and Snell & Wilmer aren’t my top news sources, you know?
I will never understand the lack of media coverage of these important decisions.
It turns out that the Medicare telehealth extension was baked into March’s budget bill titled “H.R.1968 - Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025.” There isn’t much to report from the bill itself except that the expiration dates were swapped from March 31, 2025, to September 30, 2025.
I’ll happily take the extension and hope for something more permanent in September.
P.S. Also, because so many of us rely on these crucial benefits, I’m obligated to make sure you know this isn’t an April Fool’s joke.
P.P.S. The “master public health post” is a week or two away. Stay tuned.
This is critical (excellent) news, Jess. I too don't know why there's been such scant (no?) reporting about it, but I am happy to know this has been extended until September. Thank you for digging deep and sharing this.✨️