Join us in urging Congress to extend telehealth services indefinitely through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Thank you for all of your previous efforts asking them to extend telehealth services. In response, Congress extended financial support for telehealth services for three months through March 2025 for people with Medicare through The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Congress must permanently fund telehealth access.

Telehealth services have been invaluable to communities especially those with limited access to care. But Congress has not acted to extend financial support for telehealth services beyond December 2024 for people with Medicare and Medicaid through The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As a result, beginning on April 1, 2025, many people will lose access to telehealth services. Insurance companies will likely follow suit, resulting in many more millions of Americans losing access to this important type of care.

Ending telehealth access will force disabled, terminally-ill, high risk, immunocompromised people into in-person visits for things that absolutely don’t require in-person exams. This will force terminally ill and high risk and immunocompromised people to get mental health services on-site. Ultimately, this affects people in rural communities who face either long distances or other challenges traveling to appointments. Telehealth access changed healthcare for the better,narrowing the gaps in health disparities between different populations.

You can submit a letter to our members of Congress both the House and the Senate via our Action Network or contact members Congress using their contact information, keeping our letter in full or editing it as you wish.

Please personalize your letter. Letters to elected officials are most effective when they start with a brief personal comment (a sentence or two) about why and how telehealth services have been important as a type of healthcare service to you, your loved ones, and your community.

I urge you to act today to extend funding telehealth services via Medicare and Medicaid. Telehealth services must not end in March 2025. Telehealth service should be a permanent option for all patients, and covered by all insurance, first and foremost Medicare and Medicaid.

Nearly 80% of all people have accessed telemedicine once in their lives and 39% of all US adults had a telemedicine encounter in 2022. Over 67 million older adults will lose invaluable and convenient access to healthcare services. Nearly 20% of all Americans reside in rural or frontier regions. Rural Americans benefit from immediate access to healthcare services that telehealth provides. Telehealth services affect everyone and have received support from political leaders from all viewpoints. Already, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted in full support to approve a two-year extension of telehealth policies in the Medicare program. We need the full House of Representatives and the Senate to sign their policy into law.

In summary, I would like to see:

1. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) must provide indefinite financial support for existing telehealth services.

2. The telehealth program at Medicare should continue to adopt policies that ensure accessible access to healthcare services through different modes of communication.

I appreciate your time and consideration of this important matter!