Title: Rural and Frontier Telehealth Expansion Act
Policy area: Health

Summary:
Rural and Frontier Telehealth Expansion Act
This bill increases the applicable Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (i.e., federal matching rate) under Medicaid for telehealth services in rural states or states that have limited broadband infrastructure and that provide consistent and widespread coverage for such services.

[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 2197 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

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117th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 2197

 To amend title XIX of the Social Security Act to increase the Federal 
medical assistance percentage for States that provide Medicaid coverage 
                        for telehealth services.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             June 23, 2021

  Ms. Rosen (for herself, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Tester, Mrs. Capito, Mr. 
Lujan, and Ms. Murkowski) introduced the following bill; which was read 
             twice and referred to the Committee on Finance

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To amend title XIX of the Social Security Act to increase the Federal 
medical assistance percentage for States that provide Medicaid coverage 
                        for telehealth services.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Rural and Frontier Telehealth 
Expansion Act''.

SEC. 2. INCREASED FMAP FOR STATES PROVIDING MEDICAID COVERAGE FOR 
              TELEHEALTH SERVICES.

    Section 1905(b) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1396d(b)) is 
amended, in the first sentence--
            (1) by striking ``and (5)'' and inserting ``(5)''; and
            (2) by inserting ``, and (6) in the case of a frontier 
        State (as defined in section 1886(d)(3)(E)(iii)(II)) or a State 
        where less than 90 percent of the total population has access 
        to fixed terrestrial broadband service with at least 25 
        megabits per second (Mbps) download speed and 3 Mbps upload 
        speed (according to the most recently available annual 
        Broadband Deployment Report of the Federal Communications 
        Commission) that, as determined by the Secretary, provides 
        medical assistance for telehealth services (including audio-
        only telehealth services) for a majority of the services for 
        which medical assistance is available under the State plan (or 
        a waiver of such plan) and for which telehealth is appropriate 
        and provides such services at a level that is not less than the 
        level at which the State provided such services on January 1, 
        2021, the Federal medical assistance percentage, as determined 
        under this subsection and subsection (y), shall be increased by 
        5 percentage points with respect to medical assistance for 
        telehealth services'' before the period.
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