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Most Medicare telehealth coverage ended on October 1, affecting millions of aging and disabled people. <\/span>Tom Williams\/CQ Roll Call\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n In 2001,<\/span> Congress<\/span> implemented partial Medicare coverage for telehealth<\/a>, allowing remote visits with doctors and other forms of long-distance care\u2014a response to the increasing need, in particular, for people in rural areas to reach specialists, and an essential service especially after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when lawmakers expanded that coverage to a broad range of services now used<\/a> by a quarter of the country\u2019s 68 million Medicare users.<\/p>\n But Wednesday\u2019s federal budget impasse has halted that funding\u2014and unlike other, temporary service cuts brought on by the shutdown, telehealth won\u2019t be restored for long just by bringing the government back online.<\/p>\n As a consequence of the temporary way it was funded, Congress has had to renew Medicare telehealth coverage roughly annually, or even twice a year, since 2021.<\/p>\n This latest termination is linked to the government shutdown that began Wednesday: Medicare telehealth funds were tied to the failed continuing resolution for the federal budget, which would have funded government operations for just seven more weeks. But the repeated expirations of a program with bipartisan support, which Congress has repeatedly agreed to continue, look increasingly ridiculous to health care advocates and federal government observers.<\/p>\n Multiple bills across multiple recent sessions of Congress would have extended that coverage either for a two-year period<\/a> or more permanently<\/a>. The president of the American Medical Association has also argued<\/a> in support of making telehealth coverage permanent for people on Medicare.<\/p>\n \u201cCommercial payers generally follow Medicare guidance, and\u2026this could eliminate coverage for telemedicine across the board for all Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Gin Jones, an author who lives in Massachusetts, is one of the millions of people affected. Jones has a rare genetic disorder, X-linked hypophosphatemia, which requires specialized treatment from an endocrinologist who lives four hours away. Her next visit, on Tuesday, may be in-person rather than remote; Jones doesn\u2019t know what she is going to do about it. The long trip would be exhausting and painful and an \u201cextraordinary waste of my time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe big question is whether I go ahead and endure the four-hour round trip,\u201d Jones said, \u201cor switch to a closer endocrinologist who isn\u2019t really qualified to treat me.\u201d<\/p>\n Some smaller clinics are rescheduling their Medicare patients in person and suspending their telehealth appointments for Medicare patients, said Lydia Homovich, a policy analyst with the Center for Telehealth and eHealth Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Other patients are insulated, said Homovich, as some larger institutions are \u201cgoing to continue providing these telehealth services as normal, even if they don\u2019t get back payment for that if the waivers are reauthorized.\u201d<\/p>\n\n