Dec 15, 2021 2 min read

There is no such thing as good timing for a pandemic, but COVID-19 at least arose in an era when people could use technology to address their other medical concerns by meeting remotely with their medical providers over the internet.

Broadly available telemedicine proved to be a blessing not only for patients who were able to maintain access to their doctors without risking personal contact, but for providers who also were able to diminish that risk while maintaining their practices with the revenue generated by telemedicine visits.

Telemedicine was on the rise well before the pandemic hit with full force early in 2020. It enabled people in remote rural areas, ambulatory limits or transportation concerns to meet with medical professionals without the expense, time and other obstacles that they faced with in-person visits.

It’s clear that the pandemic experience accelerated telemedicine’s rise as a permanent aspect of American health care delivery.

Yet Pennsylvania, one of the most rural states, is just one of seven states that does not have a law requiring health insurers to cover telemedicine. The result, as reported by the reporting consortium Spotlight PA, is highly inconsistent access based on the administrative and economic preferences of providers and insurers, rather than on the needs of patients.

That’s partly because patients are the only parties involved in health care who don’t have an organized lobby in Harrisburg.

For the past five years, Sen. Elder Vogel of Beaver County, a member of the legislative Republican majority, has been trying to pass a law requiring reimbursements and establishing definitions for what constitutes telemedicine. But the bill usually has been sent to committees to die in one or both houses. It passed both houses in 2020, amid the pandemic when telemedicine proved its value, but Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed it after a committee chairman attached an unrelated measure to preclude the use of telemedicine to prescribe abortion medication.

Lawmakers should stop trying to practice medicine and pass a telehealth bill to facilitate its practice by professionals, and access to it by patients.