The Partnership for Employer-Sponsored Coverage, an advocacy alliance founded on behalf of millions of businesses of all sizes, expressed its support for expanding employee access to telehealth services in a statement for the House Ways and Means Committee’s hearing today entitled “Charting the Path Forward for Telehealth.”

P4ESC’s hearing statement noted “…the time is ripe to modernize laws to increase access to telehealth services as patients, health providers, and coverage plan sponsors continue to adapt to and comply with remote working and social distancing measures" as a result from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Coalition specifically expressed its support for enabling employers to offer a stand-alone telehealth service plan to all employees, regardless enrollment in sponsored medical coverage, and stated that “[o]ffering this type of telehealth service to employees is not at all meant to circumvent an employer’s responsibility to offer a medical plan to full-time employees under the ACA’s employer mandate.”

The full statement is available HERE and an excerpt on policy priorities is below.

P4ESC supports: 1) treating telehealth services as an excepted benefit which would enable employers to offer this type of coverage to part-time and variable workforces, and other employees not enrolled in the employers’ medical plan; 2) reforming licensure requirements to enable services to be offered across state lines; 3) establishing a national set of standards for telemedicine services to address state-based requirements that have not kept pace with technology, practice site and remote working advances, including eliminating originating site and prior provider relationship requirements; and 4) clarifying that CARES Act telemedicine provisions are effective for plan years on or after January 1, 2019 (employer plan years vary between non-calendar and calendar year basis).