“Breaking news: The Trump administration just announced that Medicare will stop covering telehealth starting April 1. … We need to stand up to these Medicare cuts.”
Rep. Ro. Khanna (D-Calif.), in a TikTok video posted Feb. 20, 2025
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) posted a Tiktok video on Feb. 20 saying he had “breaking news” about the fate of Medicare coverage for telehealth visits, which allow patients to see health care providers remotely from their homes.
“Breaking news: The Trump administration just announced that Medicare will stop covering telehealth starting April 1,” Khanna said. “We need to stand up to these Medicare cuts.”
The same day, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services posted a document online titled “Telehealth” that said, “Through March 31, 2025, you can get telehealth services at any location in the U.S., including your home. Starting April 1, 2025, you must be in an office or medical facility located in a rural area (in the U.S.) for most telehealth services.”
CMS did not respond to requests for comment about the post. The White House also did not respond to requests for comment.
The telehealth benefit was first put in place as a temporary Trump-era addition to Medicare coverage during the covid-19 public health emergency.
Khanna’s statement took on more significance leading up to the threat of a government shutdown, but late last week Congress averted one by approving a stopgap spending bill.
The expiration date for the benefit has been known since December, when Congress extended coverage around telehealth through March 31. The roughly 90-day reprieve was part of a compromise after then-President-elect Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk criticized a sweeping, end-of-year legislative package that would have, among other things, continued those benefits for two years.
Their opposition forced Congress to pass a stripped-down version of the end-of-year bill. Telehealth’s two-year extension, included in the initial bill, became collateral damage.
Last week, just as the clock was ticking down, House Republicans passed a spending bill for the rest of the fiscal year that includes another extension of telehealth flexibilities — this one lasting through September. The Senate then cleared the bill for Trump’s signature, with the support of 10 Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Regardless, the two-year extension proposed in December — or a permanent extension, as Khanna has urged — looks unlikely.
“President Trump and Elon Musk blew up the continuing resolution last December that would have extended these telehealth authorities by two years,” Khanna told us via email. “Trump should work with Congress to extend telehealth coverage for Medicare beneficiaries.”
It wouldn’t come free. Permanently extending telehealth for medical care under Medicare could cost taxpayers about $25 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated. The CBO calculated five months of expanded telehealth coverage as costing $663 million, and calculated that that would total almost $25 billion through fiscal year 2031 if spending remained level, which it may not do.
Also, the agency and the Government Accountability Office have raised concerns about fraud and overuse of the benefit, among other potential issues.
Congress made Medicare coverage of behavioral health services delivered remotely permanent in December 2020, but left other telehealth benefits hanging on by a string. Instead, lawmakers extended them for short periods during the nearly two years since the public health emergency officially ended in May 2023.
“Now, once again, we’ve got another deadline where, if Congress doesn’t act, our flexibilities go away,” said Kyle Zebley, senior vice president of public policy for the American Telemedicine Association.
And if, at some point, the telehealth benefits aren’t extended, is it fair to describe the policy change as a cut? Khanna, for instance, plans to introduce the Telehealth Coverage Act, which would require Medicare to cover seniors’ telehealth services.
Politically speaking, it’s a powerful question when trying to leverage public support — and politicians in both parties often accuse their opponents of “cutting” federal benefits when they make changes to programs.
“Khanna is overly dramatic,” said Joseph Antos, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
If the provision expires, Antos said, “this is not a Trump cut.”
But beneficiaries might have a different experience. Since the early days of the pandemic — five years now — millions of patients have come to rely on telehealth for their medical services. That benefit, even with another temporary reprieve, would still be at risk.
According to CMS, more than 1 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries used virtual care services as of 2023. And, after the Trump administration green-lighted telehealth for Medicare recipients in 2020, many private insurers did the same.
Overall telehealth claims rose from fewer than 1% of all commercial claims before the covid pandemic to a peak of 13% in April 2020. Now they stand at close to 5%, according to Fair Health, a nonprofit that tracks health care costs.
Those in the telehealth industry are optimistic about the current extension. The Trump administration, they say, has been sending encouraging signals — even highlighting its previous support of telemedicine in its fact sheet on the launch of the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission.
“We’ve been sweating bullets,” Zebley said. “But it’s been nerve-wracking before. I think we’re going to get it done.”
Antos said, however, that after the extension in the House-passed spending bill, Medicare’s telemedicine benefits could be dead.
Our Ruling
Khanna said, “Breaking news: The Trump administration just announced that Medicare will stop covering telehealth starting April 1. … We need to stand up to these Medicare cuts.”
The statement is partially accurate, because the Trump administration announced the March 31 sunset of Medicare telehealth visits, and some beneficiaries who were using that benefit could see it as a “cut.” But the claim lacks key context that the expiration date was set by Congress, not the Trump administration.
After Khanna’s claim, Congress extended access to telehealth coverage through September.
Based on information that was available at the time, we rate Khanna’s statement Half True.
Our Sources:
Rep. Ro Khanna’s Feb. 20, 2025 TikTok video.
The American Relief Act, 2025.
Vice President J.D. Vance’s X post on behalf of himself and President Donald Trump on the year-end legislative package, Dec. 18, 2024.
One of a flurry of Elon Musk’s X posts deriding the government’s year-end legislative package, Dec. 20, 2024.
Email interview with Rep. Ro Khanna’s office, March 3, 2025.
H.R.1968 — Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025.
H.R.133 — Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021
Phone interview and follow-up texts with Kyle Zebley, senior vice president of public policy for the American Telemedicine Association and executive director of ATA Action, March 3, 2025.
Email interview with Joseph Antos, senior fellow emeritus for public policy research at the think tank the American Enterprise Institute, March 8, 2025.
A Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services post CMS post titled “Telehealth” that includes information to recipients about Medicare telehealth benefits ending April 1, 2025.
The journal Primary Care, “The State of Telehealth Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic,” April 25, 2022.
CMS, “Medicare Telehealth Trends,” Jan. 1, 2020 and June 30, 2024.
“Fiscal Considerations for the Future of Telehealth,” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, April 21, 2022.
H.R. 2471, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Congressional Budget Office, March 14, 2022.
“Medicare and Medicaid: COVID-19 Program Flexibilities and Considerations for Their Continuation,” U.S. Government Accountability Office, May 19, 2021.
Preprint: “Telehealth and Outpatient Utilization: Trends in Evaluation and Management Visits Among Medicare Fee-For-Service Beneficiaries, 2019-2024,” March 6, 2025.
Preprint: “Association Between Telehealth Use and Downstream 30-Day Medicare Spending,” Feb. 11, 2025.
Ro Khanna’s press release on the telehealth bill he’s introducing.
“Annual Number of Users of Online Doctor Consultations Worldwide From 2017 to 2028,” Statista Market Insights, March 15, 2024.
ATA Action letter to Congress, Jan. 13, 2025.
Make America Healthy Again fact sheet, Feb. 13, 2025.
CMS, “Medicare Telehealth Trends Report,” October 2024.
