STAT+: House panel eyes PBM reform to pay for telehealth extensions

A new bill set to be considered on Wednesday by the House Ways & Means Committee would extend for two years telehealth flexibilities for Medicare enrollees that were adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic, and look to reform drug industry middlemen to pay for it.

At the end of the official public health emergency, Congress extended flexibilities that changed where and what kinds of care people could receive over telehealth, but those rules are set to expire at the end of the year. Telehealth use by Medicare enrollees remains above pre-pandemic levels for many specialities.

The health care industry has been anxious about what sorts of policies could be passed to help pay for the telehealth policies, which are broadly popular and bipartisan. The Ways & Means panel has attached policies that would regulate pharmacy benefit managers by limiting how they can receive money from drugmakers and imposing transparency requirements to the two-year telehealth extension.

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