Health Care Policy Update – Weekly Wrap-Up and What’s Ahead

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 What’s Ahead: This Week Hearings – Tuesday, October 3 House Energy & Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Health, “Examining Patient Access to Investigational Drugs.” Wednesday, October 4 Senate Finance Committee, “Open Executive Session to Consider the Keep Kids’ Insurance Dependable and Secure (KIDS) Act of 2017.” Thursday, October 5 Senate HELP Committee, “The Federal Response to the… Read more »

Both Sides of the Aisle Agree – Telemedicine is the Future | The Hill Op-ed

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Last Thursday, in the midst of the intense debate about the future of ObamaCare, Congress held yet another hearing extoling the virtues of telehealth and remote patient monitoring, and lamenting the barriers in Medicare that are preventing seniors from accessing these new technologies in the same way as patients in the commercial market. The hearing… Read more »

Commentary: Time for Congress to Make Payments for Telehealth Happen

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The reason that telehealth usage among seniors in Medicare is almost non-existent is because the rules were written at a time when telehealth was used primarily to provide access to care for rural patients. To access a physician remotely, Medicare beneficiaries have to be in a rural area and in an “originating site” defined as… Read more »

How Telemedicine Could be More Helpful in the Ebola Outbreak

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As Congress examines the U.S. public health system’s response to Ebola this week, we need to take a look at laws and regulations that inhibit better treatment and increase protection for health care workers. Existing rules and regulations around telemedicine are one such example. News outlets have been chronicling the heroics of healthcare workers across… Read more »

Why Telemedicine’s Window is Finally Opening

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When I was a young undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Professor John Kingdon attempted to help his students understand why policymakers take up particular topics at particular times. The most obvious reasons are disasters or other high-profile focusing events that demand action. But most of the time, policy ideas “hit” when there is no… Read more »