Please NOTE: Telehealth has been suspended 10/1/25 for MEDICARE recipients which means Medicare won't pay for a telehealth visit. We have reached out to the Benefits office for clarification on this from Cigna whether they will still cover this service if Medicare will not.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump and Congress put into place a program that allowed people on Medicare to get their health care over the Internet.
The policy proved wildly popular. Nearly half of Medicare beneficiaries received telehealth services in 2020 in an effort to keep their distance from hospitals and doctor’s offices during the pandemic.
But the program expired Sept. 30 without Congressional action, which would left millions of seniors suddenly unable to access the telehealth care that allowed them to avoid long drives and crowded waiting rooms. The program has been threatened before—Congress had to extend it in 2021, 2022, 2023, and in March 2025—but telehealth advocates say that they have little hope that the program will be saved in time for services to avoid disruption.
Another program called acute hospital care at home, which allows convalescing patients to be discharged and receive monitored care at home, is also set to expire Sept. 30 without Congressional action. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has said that all patients must be discharged or returned to the hospital on Sept. 30.
Before the pandemic, it was extremely difficult for Medicare patients to qualify to get telehealth care. They had to live in a rural area classified a certain way, and they had to receive their telehealth services in a certain type of location—often a medical office. Congress passed waivers to those rules in the beginning of the pandemic, which are often referred to now as Medicare telehealth flexibilities.
Most mental-health telecare services under Medicare will continue after Sept. 30 because of a separate bill passed in 2021. But for other types of appointments, what will happen next is unclear.
Some providers may continue to offer telehealth to Medicare patients after Sept. 30. The telehealth flexibilities have been extended so many times in the past that many providers may assume they will be extended again, eventually—perhaps with retroactive payment for services rendered before Congress takes action. Smaller providers might not have the financial flexibility to do that, though. They may try to reschedule telehealth patients for a few weeks or months down the line, at which time they hope Congress will have acted.
