Medicare

By the Retiree Report Editorial Team · Updated 2026-06-04 · 7 min read

This article is general information, not medical advice. Talk with a licensed clinician before making any decision about your care.

Telehealth and Medicare in 2026: which visits stay covered now that the pandemic flexibilities are back

If you’ve been worried that the doctor’s visit you do from your kitchen table is about to disappear, here’s the short version: most Medicare telehealth coverage is back, and it now runs through December 31, 2027. A budget deal signed on February 3, 2026, restored the rules that had briefly lapsed, and it covers visits done from your own home. Behavioral and mental health visits, separately, are covered for good.

That’s the headline.

The details are worth your attention, because the rules are not all the same, and they don’t all expire on the same day.

What changed on October 1, 2025

The broad telehealth rules many older Americans got used to during the pandemic were never permanent law. They were a temporary set of waivers, renewed by Congress again and again. On September 30, 2025, the latest renewal ran out. By then the habit was widespread — in a January 2024 AARP poll, nearly three-quarters of adults 50 and older said they’d used a telehealth service at least once in the previous year — which is part of why the lapse drew so much attention.

For a stretch that fall, Medicare’s rules snapped back to where they stood before COVID-19. Under those older limits, most telehealth was only paid for if you were physically in a clinic, hospital, or other approved “originating site” in a rural area — not at home. A government shutdown made the lapse messier still. Coverage was eventually restored and paid retroactively, but the episode left a lot of people confused about whether their next video visit would be billed.

Then lawmakers acted again. President Trump signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, on February 3, extending the expanded telehealth rules through the end of 2027 — roughly 23 more months of coverage, according to AARP. So the on-again, off-again drama of late 2025 is, for now, settled.

What’s covered now — and until when?

Through December 31, 2027, Original Medicare pays for telehealth on the expanded terms that became familiar during the pandemic. You can be at home. There are no rural-only geographic restrictions for the originating site. And the list of providers who can bill for a virtual visit is broad — your regular doctor, a specialist, and many others.

A few specifics are worth knowing. For most non-behavioral care, audio-only visits (a plain phone call, no video) are covered through that same 2027 date, which matters if you don’t have reliable internet or a smartphone camera. Federally Qualified Health Centers and Rural Health Clinics can keep serving as distant-site telehealth providers. A doctor can conduct an initial telehealth visit even if they’ve never treated you in person before. And the same law lets clinicians use telehealth to satisfy the face-to-face requirement for recertifying a patient for hospice care, a narrow but meaningful provision for families managing end-of-life decisions.

What kinds of visits make sense over video? Plenty of routine care fits — medication check-ins, reviewing test results, managing a stable chronic condition like high blood pressure or diabetes, and follow-ups that don’t need a hands-on exam. KFF reports that telehealth use among Medicare beneficiaries, which spiked to nearly half of eligible people in the second quarter of 2020, has settled to a steadier rate — about one in eight as of mid-2025. It’s no longer a novelty. It’s a normal way to see a clinician for the right kind of problem.

Which telehealth benefits are permanent

Here’s the part that often gets lost in the headlines. Not everything depends on the 2027 deadline. Mental health and behavioral health telehealth is covered permanently, written into law by an earlier statute (the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021) rather than the temporary waivers.

That permanent coverage is meaningful. You can receive behavioral health care from home, in any part of the country, with no rural restriction — and audio-only is allowed if you can’t manage a video connection. For someone seeing a therapist or psychiatrist regularly, that stability is real.

The contrast looks like this:

A handful of other changes also became permanent through Medicare’s annual rulemaking. The 2026 Physician Fee Schedule, for example, dropped the old frequency caps on certain telehealth visits in hospitals and nursing facilities and for critical care consultations — limits that used to restrict how often a clinician could check on you by video. Those don’t ride on the 2027 deadline either.

One wrinkle to file away. Behavioral telehealth carries a rule that you have an in-person visit within six months of your first virtual appointment, and once a year after that. That requirement has been repeatedly delayed and, as things stand, isn’t due to take effect until January 2028, KFF notes. It’s a detail to revisit, not something to act on today.

What you’ll pay, and how to make sure a visit is covered

A telehealth visit isn’t free, and it isn’t cheaper than an office visit either. Under Original Medicare, you generally pay the same as you would in person: 20% of the Medicare-approved amount after you’ve met your Part B deductible, Kiplinger explains. If you carry a Medigap policy, it may pick up that coinsurance the way it does for in-person care. This isn’t individual medical or financial advice — your own costs depend on your coverage and your providers, so confirm with your plan before you assume anything.

A practical step before your next virtual appointment: ask the office two plain questions. First, are they billing Medicare for this as a telehealth visit? Second, will you be charged your usual coinsurance? Both should have simple answers. If you’re enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan rather than Original Medicare, your telehealth benefits may be broader or structured differently — many plans market extra virtual-care perks — so check your plan’s rules directly. Our guide to Medicare Advantage versus Original Medicare walks through how the two differ. And because telehealth coverage has historically turned on where you are, it’s worth reading our note on Medicare coverage while traveling before you assume a video visit from a hotel or a relative’s house will be billed the same way.

What to remember

Three things will carry you through 2026. Most Medicare telehealth — the at-home, no-rural-limit kind — is covered through December 31, 2027, restored by the budget law signed in February. Mental and behavioral health telehealth is permanent and doesn’t hinge on that deadline. And you’ll pay for a video or phone visit the way you pay for an office visit: the Part B deductible, then 20% coinsurance, unless other coverage fills the gap.

The 2027 date isn’t the end of the story so much as the next decision point. Congress has extended these rules many times, and patient groups including AARP are pushing to make them permanent — but until that happens, it’s smart to keep an eye on the calendar as 2027 approaches.