Doctors cancel telehealth appointments as Medicare coverage lapses [View all]

Source: Roll Call

Posted October 3, 2025 at 2:01pm


Health care providers across the country are canceling telehealth visits with Medicare beneficiaries or warning patients they will have to pay out of pocket for appointments because Congress let coverage lapse. When government funding expired Sept. 30, so did several health care policies mostly involving payments, and among them are provisions that allowed Medicare to cover telehealth services for millions of people who are 65 and older or have disabilities. Congress typically extends this telehealth coverage before it expires, but the provision became a casualty in the broader impasse on funding the government.

“It’s already leading to widespread disruptions and it’s something that need not have happened,” said Kyle Zebley, executive director of American Telemedicine Association Action, which advocates for permanent Medicare telehealth coverage. “Patients desperate to stay out of in-person settings out of absolute necessity are now being told for no reason other than lack of congressional action now they’re out on their own.”

Before 2020, Medicare’s coverage of telehealth services was very limited, mostly to people living in rural communities. Those people still had to travel to a provider’s office to do a telehealth appointment with another provider.

But the pandemic changed the landscape. Restrictions on access for beneficiaries in traditional Medicare — also called fee-for-service — were removed during the first Trump administration, allowing people to have appointments from home. Telehealth use has since increased significantly among Medicare beneficiaries. In the first quarter of this year, 15 percent of traditional Medicare beneficiaries had a telehealth service, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Congress then allowed those flexibilities to continue after the COVID-19 public health emergency.

Read more: https://rollcall.com/2025/10/03/doctors-cancel-telehealth-appointments-as-medicare-coverage-lapses/