By Arielle Kane and Charlie Katebi
When it comes to health policy, “as Medicare goes, so goes the nation.” Unfortunately, burdensome federal regulations prevented Medicare from delivering virtual care to millions of seniors around the country — until the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lawmakers enacted these restrictions because they feared making telehealth widely accessible would lead to patients using unnecessary health care services. Many private insurers followed Medicare’s lead and similarly limited access to many telehealth services.
But when confronted with the crisis of coronavirus, which shut down large parts of the economy and forced families to stay home to reduce the spread of infection, state and federal lawmakers dropped those objections, rightly concluding that telehealth would help people access care during the emergency.
