“Breaking news: The Trump administration just announced that Medicare will stop covering telehealth starting April 1. … We need to stand up to these Medicare cuts.”

Rep. Ro. Khanna (D-Calif.), in a TikTok video posted Feb. 20, 2025

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) posted a Tiktok video on Feb. 20 saying he had “breaking news” about the fate of Medicare coverage for telehealth visits, which allow patients to see health care providers remotely from their homes.

“Breaking news: The Trump administration just announced that Medicare will stop covering telehealth starting April 1,” Khanna said. “We need to stand up to these Medicare cuts.”

The same day, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services posted a document online titled “Telehealth” that said, “Through March 31, 2025, you can get telehealth services at any location in the U.S., including your home. Starting April 1, 2025, you must be in an office or medical facility located in a rural area (in the U.S.) for most telehealth services.”

CMS did not respond to requests for comment about the post. The White House also did not respond to requests for comment.

The telehealth benefit was first put in place as a temporary Trump-era addition to Medicare coverage during the covid-19 public health emergency.

Khanna’s statement took on more significance leading up to the threat of a government shutdown, but late last week Congress averted one by approving a stopgap spending bill.

The expiration date for the benefit has been known since December, when Congress extended coverage around telehealth through March 31. The roughly 90-day reprieve was part of a compromise after then-President-elect Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk criticized a sweeping, end-of-year legislative package that would have, among other things, continued those benefits for two years.

Their opposition forced Congress to pass a stripped-down version of the end-of-year bill. Telehealth’s two-year extension, included in the initial bill, became collateral damage.

Last week, just as the clock was ticking down, House Republicans passed a spending bill for the rest of the fiscal year that includes another extension of telehealth flexibilities — this one lasting through September. The Senate then cleared the bill for Trump’s signature, with the support of 10 Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Regardless, the two-year extension proposed in December — or a permanent extension, as Khanna has urged — looks unlikely.

“President Trump and Elon Musk blew up the continuing resolution last December that would have extended these telehealth authorities by two years,” Khanna told us via email. “Trump should work with Congress to extend telehealth coverage for Medicare beneficiaries.”

It wouldn’t come free. Permanently extending telehealth for medical care under Medicare could cost taxpayers about $25 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated. The CBO calculated five months of expanded telehealth coverage as costing $663 million, and calculated that that would total almost $25 billion through fiscal year 2031 if spending remained level, which it may not do.

Also, the agency and the Government Accountability Office have raised concerns about fraud and overuse of the benefit, among other potential issues.

Congress made Medicare coverage of behavioral health services delivered remotely permanent in December 2020, but left other telehealth benefits hanging on by a string. Instead, lawmakers extended them for short periods during the nearly two years since the public health emergency officially ended in May 2023.

“Now, once again, we’ve got another deadline where, if Congress doesn’t act, our flexibilities go away,” said Kyle Zebley, senior vice president of public policy for the American Telemedicine Association.

And if, at some point, the telehealth benefits aren’t extended, is it fair to describe the policy change as a cut? Khanna, for instance, plans to introduce the Telehealth Coverage Act, which would require Medicare to cover seniors’ telehealth services.

Politically speaking, it’s a powerful question when trying to leverage public support — and politicians in both parties often accuse their opponents of “cutting” federal benefits when they make changes to programs.

“Khanna is overly dramatic,” said Joseph Antos, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

If the provision expires, Antos said, “this is not a Trump cut.”

But beneficiaries might have a different experience. Since the early days of the pandemic — five years now — millions of patients have come to rely on telehealth for their medical services. That benefit, even with another temporary reprieve, would still be at risk.

According to CMS, more than 1 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries used virtual care services as of 2023. And, after the Trump administration green-lighted telehealth for Medicare recipients in 2020, many private insurers did the same.

Overall telehealth claims in Medicare rose from fewer than 1% of all claims before the covid pandemic to a peak of 13% in April 2020. Now they stand at close to 5%, according to Fair Health, a nonprofit that tracks health care costs.

Those in the telehealth industry are optimistic about the current extension. The Trump administration, they say, has been sending encouraging signals — even highlighting its previous support of telemedicine in its fact sheet on the launch of the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission.

“We’ve been sweating bullets,” Zebley said. “But it’s been nerve-wracking before. I think we’re going to get it done.”

Antos said, however, that after the extension in the House-passed spending bill, Medicare’s telemedicine benefits could be dead.

Our Ruling

Khanna said, “Breaking news: The Trump administration just announced that Medicare will stop covering telehealth starting April 1. … We need to stand up to these Medicare cuts.”

The statement is partially accurate, because the Trump administration announced the March 31 sunset of Medicare telehealth visits, and some beneficiaries who were using that benefit could see it as a “cut.” But the claim lacks key context that the expiration date was set by Congress, not the Trump administration.

After Khanna’s claim, Congress extended access to telehealth coverage through September.

Based on information that was available at the time, we rate Khanna’s statement Half True.

Our Sources:

Rep. Ro Khanna’s Feb. 20, 2025 TikTok video.

The American Relief Act, 2025.

Vice President J.D. Vance’s X post on behalf of himself and President Donald Trump on the year-end legislative package, Dec. 18, 2024.

One of a flurry of Elon Musk’s X posts deriding the government’s year-end legislative package, Dec. 20, 2024.

Email interview with Rep. Ro Khanna’s office, March 3, 2025.

H.R.1968 — Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025.

H.R.133 — Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021

Phone interview and follow-up texts with Kyle Zebley, senior vice president of public policy for the American Telemedicine Association and executive director of ATA Action, March 3, 2025.

Email interview with Joseph Antos, senior fellow emeritus for public policy research at the think tank the American Enterprise Institute, March 8, 2025.

A Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services post CMS post titled “Telehealth” that includes information to recipients about Medicare telehealth benefits ending April 1, 2025.

The journal Primary Care, “The State of Telehealth Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic,” April 25, 2022.

CMS, “Medicare Telehealth Trends,” Jan. 1, 2020 and June 30, 2024.

“Fiscal Considerations for the Future of Telehealth,” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, April 21, 2022.

H.R. 2471, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Congressional Budget Office, March 14, 2022.

“Medicare and Medicaid: COVID-19 Program Flexibilities and Considerations for Their Continuation,” U.S. Government Accountability Office, May 19, 2021.

Preprint: “Telehealth and Outpatient Utilization: Trends in Evaluation and Management Visits Among Medicare Fee-For-Service Beneficiaries, 2019-2024,” March 6, 2025.

Preprint: “Association Between Telehealth Use and Downstream 30-Day Medicare Spending,” Feb. 11, 2025.

Ro Khanna’s press release on the telehealth bill he’s introducing.

“Annual Number of Users of Online Doctor Consultations Worldwide From 2017 to 2028,” Statista Market Insights, March 15, 2024.

ATA Action letter to Congress, Jan. 13, 2025.

Make America Healthy Again fact sheet, Feb. 13, 2025.

CMS, “Medicare Telehealth Trends Report,” October 2024.

Spending cuts, immigration, and Medicaid are at the top of the Washington agenda. That climate provides fertile ground for misinformation and myths to multiply on social networks. Some of the most common are those surrounding immigrants, Latinos, and Medicaid.

These claims include assertions that Latinos who use Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income people and those with disabilities, “do not work” and exaggerations of the percentage of people with Medicaid who are Latinos.

The U.S. House voted narrowly on Feb. 25 in favor of a budget blueprint that could lead to Medicaid cuts of up to $880 billion over a decade.

Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program are part of the national safety net, covering about 80 million people. Medicaid enrollment grew under the Affordable Care Act and after the start of the covid-19 pandemic but then started falling during the final two years of the Biden administration.

Immigrants’ impact on the nation’s health care system can be overstated in heated political rhetoric. Now-Vice President JD Vance said on the campaign trail last year that “we’re bankrupting a lot of hospitals by forcing these hospitals to provide care for people who don’t have the legal right to be in our country.” PolitiFact rated that statement “False.”

KFF Health News, in partnership with Factchequeado, compiled five myths circulating on social media and analyzed them with experts in the field.

1. Do Latinos who receive Medicaid work?

Most do. A KFF analysis of Medicaid data found that almost 67% of Latinos on Medicaid work, “which is a higher share of Medicaid adults who are working compared to other racial and ethnic groups,” said Jennifer Tolbert, deputy director of KFF’s Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

“For many low-income people, the myth is that they are not working, even though we know from a lot of data that many people work but don’t have access to affordable employer-sponsored insurance,” said Timothy McBride, co-director at the Center for Advancing Health Services, Policy and Economics Research, part of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis.

Neither the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health nor the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services responded to requests for comment.

2. Are Latinos the largest group enrolled in Medicaid?

No. White people who are not Hispanic represent the biggest demographic group in Medicaid and CHIP. The programs’ enrollment is 42% non-Hispanic white, 28% Latinos, and 18% non-Hispanic Black, with small percentages of other minorities, according to a CMS document.

Latinos’ share of total Medicaid enrollment “has remained fairly stable for many years — hovering between 26 and 30% since at least 2008,” said Gideon Lukens, research and data analysis director on the health policy team at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research organization.

In a Feb. 18 blog post, Alex Nowrasteh and Jerome Famularo of the libertarian Cato Institute wrote: “The biggest myth in the debate over immigrant welfare use is that noncitizens — which includes illegal immigrants and those lawfully present on various temporary visas and green cards — disproportionately consume welfare. That is not the case.” They included Medicaid in the term “welfare.”

Although Latinos are not the biggest group in Medicaid, they are the demographic group with the greatest percentage of people receiving Medicaid. There are about 65.2 million Hispanics in the country, representing 19.5% of the total U.S. population.

Approximately 31% of the Latino population is enrolled in Medicaid, in part because employed Latinos often have jobs that do not offer affordable insurance.

Eligibility for Medicaid is based on factors such as income, age, and pregnancy or disability status, and it varies from state to state, said Kelly Whitener, associate professor of practice at the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.

“Medicaid eligibility is not based on race or ethnicity,” Whitener said.

3. Do most Latinos living in the country without legal permission use Medicaid?

No. Under federal law, immigrants lacking legal status are not eligible for federal Medicaid benefits.

As of January, 14 states and the District of Columbia had used their own funds to expand coverage to children in the country without regard to immigration status. Of those, seven states and D.C. expanded coverage to some adults regardless of immigration status.

The cost of providing health care to these beneficiaries is covered entirely by the states. The federal government does not put up a penny.

The federal government does pay for Emergency Medicaid, which reimburses hospitals for medical emergencies for people who, because of their immigration status or other factors, do not normally qualify for the program.

Emergency Medicaid began in 1986 under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, signed by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican.

In 2023, Emergency Medicaid accounted for 0.4% of total Medicaid spending.

Some conservative lawmakers say immigrants in the country illegally should not get any Medicaid benefits.

“Medicaid is meant for American citizens who need it most — seniors, children, pregnant women, and the disabled,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said on social media. “But liberal states are finding ways to game the system and make taxpayers cover healthcare for illegal immigrants.”

4. Do Latinos stay on Medicaid for decades?

Experts say there is no analysis by race or ethnicity of the length of time people use the program.

“The people who stay on Medicaid the longest are people who have Medicaid due to a disability and who live with a medical situation that does not change,” Tolbert said.

People who use long-term Medicaid support services represent 6% of the total number of people in the program.

Many beneficiaries are in the program temporarily, McBride said.

“Some studies indicate that as many as half of the people on Medicaid churn off of Medicaid within a short period of time,” he said, such as within a year.

5. Are Latinos on Medicaid the group that uses medical services the most?

Latinos do not use significantly more Medicaid services than others, experts say. Latinos receive preventive services (such as mammograms, pap smears, and colonoscopies), primary care and mental health care less than other groups, according to documents from CMS and the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, a nonpartisan organization that provides policy and data analysis.

Latinos do account for a disproportionate share of Medicaid labor and delivery services. Latino families and white families each represent about 35% of Medicaid births, although white people make up a bigger share of the overall population.

While Latinos represent 28% of all Medicaid and CHIP enrollees, they account for 37% of beneficiaries with limited benefits that cover only specific services.

“They actually use health care services less than other groups, because of systemic barriers such as limited English proficiency and difficulty navigating the system,” said Arturo Vargas Bustamante, a professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health and the faculty research director at the university’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute.

Latino people also avoid using services out of fear of the “public charge” rule and other policies, Vargas Bustamante said. President Donald Trump expanded the public charge policy and strongly enforced it during his first term, though it was softened under President Joe Biden. The policy was intended to make it harder for immigrants who use Medicaid or welfare programs to obtain green cards or become U.S. citizens.

“The chilling effect of public charge persists, but recent orders such as mass deportation or the elimination of birthright citizenship have generated their own chilling effects,” Vargas Bustamante added.

When patients walked into Planned Parenthood clinics, a consumer data company sold their precise locations to anti-abortion groups for targeted ads.

When patients picked up prescriptions for testosterone replacement therapy, law enforcement retrieved their names and addresses without a warrant.

And when a father was arrested by immigration authorities, agents allegedly accessed his personal information from a medical clinic where he received diabetes treatment.

Progressive California lawmakers have proposed a number of bills aimed at bolstering privacy protections for women, transgender people, and immigrants in response to such intrusions by anti-abortion groups, conservative states, and federal law enforcement agencies as President Donald Trump declares the nation “will be woke no longer” and flexes his executive power to roll back rights.

Democrats have supermajorities in the state legislature, but even if they pass the proposals, they may first need to lobby one of their own: Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has noticeably tempered his once harsh criticism of Trump.

Last month, the Democratic governor issued a rare veto threat against a bill that would expand the state’s sanctuary law to limit cooperation between state prisons and federal immigration agents. And Newsom recently called transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports “deeply unfair” on his new podcast with guest Charlie Kirk, a founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA. Newsom went on to tell Kirk that he had a “hard time with” the way the right talks about transgender people.

Billions of dollars are also on the line for California. Newsom visited the White House last month seeking unconditional aid for wildfire victims in Los Angeles, and the state relies on Washington for over 60% of its Medicaid budget, which is vulnerable to significant cuts under the GOP’s budget blueprint.

“California’s leaders have not been as aggressive, out of recognition that there are many things that the state needs federal cooperation on,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California-San Diego.

A Newsom spokesperson declined to comment on pending legislation. He has a track record of supporting abortion, transgender, and immigrant rights.

Since taking office, Trump has granted the Elon Musk-controlled Department of Government Efficiency — created through a Trump executive order — access to previously restricted data, including medical information, raising concerns that sensitive information could be exposed without proper safeguards. 

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

While most Americans are familiar with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, it offers only narrow protection for patients in health care settings. There’s no comprehensive federal law protecting data privacy.

Health care information has increasingly become a tool of surveillance and enforcement, and in states that have banned certain medical treatments or toughened immigration laws, vulnerable populations are at greater risk, said Suzanne Bernstein, a health privacy rights expert with the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Progressive Democrats are concerned that personal information and people’s medical decisions could be used to monitor or criminalize patients, facilitate arrests in or near health care facilities, or jeopardize access to health care services.

They and health privacy advocates say now is the time to shore up protections for the nearly 2 million immigrants living in California without authorization, the more than 200,000 transgender adults in the state, and thousands of people — living in the state or out of state — in need of abortion care in California each year. Some of these laws could take effect immediately if signed.

“This is about making sure that people are able to access critical health care in California and to take the politics out of our hospitals and health clinics,” said state Sen. Jesse Arreguín, who hopes the governor would sign his bill to protect immigrants.

The bills are expected to be debated in Sacramento in the coming months.

Since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, anti-abortion groups have purchased location information from consumer data companies to target people seeking abortion care with anti-abortion ads. And authorities in states with abortion bans have used cellphone data to enforce laws beyond their borders.

A bill introduced by state Assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, AB 45, would make geofencing, the collection of phone location by data brokers, illegal around health care facilities that provide in-person services. It would also prevent reproductive health information collected during research from being disclosed in response to out-of-state requests.

Conservative organizations said the proposal would single them out by restricting their ability to inform women about alternatives to abortion, including services offered by crisis pregnancy centers.

“I think that could very well be a First Amendment violation,” said Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council, a statewide anti-abortion nonprofit. “It doesn’t seem like the bill would be prohibiting or putting any restrictions on a group like Planned Parenthood if they wanted to market or target to a local high school or college.”

So far this year, lawmakers in 49 states have introduced more than 700 anti-transgender bills, seeking to ban gender-affirming care, prohibit gender identity education in schools, or restrict transgender students from participating in sports, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker, a national research organization tracking bills affecting transgender people. Transgender adults represent less than 1% of the U.S. population.

And some states with bans or restrictions on gender-affirming care have been targeting health care data. In 2023, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis requested that Florida universities release data on the number of individuals who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria or received treatment at campus clinics. That same year, Missouri’s Republican attorney general, Andrew Bailey, submitted 54 requests to one hospital seeking information about gender-affirming care procedures.

Trump has issued a series of executive orders to ban access to gender-affirming care for minors. Federal judges have temporarily blocked some portions of his orders.

To guard against other states that criminalize or ban gender-affirming care, California state Sen. Scott Wiener wants to expand current protections for minors to include adults.

His bill, SB 497, would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant to access state databases on gender-affirming care and make it a misdemeanor to release the data to unauthorized parties. It would also prohibit health care providers, employers, and insurers from releasing information about a person who seeks or obtains gender-affirming physical and mental health care to an agency or individual from another state.

“We want to make sure that we are as comprehensively as possible shielding trans people from hate emanating from the federal government, other states, and private parties,” Wiener said.

Keller countered that authorities in states with bans on abortion or gender-affirming care should have access to medical information as they investigate providers who could harm patients or coerce them into procedures against their will. He cited a lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente over a teenager who detransitioned after undergoing gender-affirming care. A 2015 survey found it was uncommon for people undergoing gender-affirming care to decide to permanently detransition.

“The only way that you’re able to uncover that level of widespread malpractice and malfeasance is if these health care records are able to be accessed,” Keller said.

The California Family Council plans to oppose both bills.

Earlier this year, Trump rescinded a long-standing policy of not making immigration arrests near hospitals, schools, or churches. The decision has providers fearful that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will disrupt their work at health facilities and prompt immigrants to skip medical care — for themselves or, of particular concern, their children.

Anticipating the move, California’s Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, issued guidance in December advising health care providers how best to respond if ICE comes to their doorstep. But while private entities are encouraged to follow these policies, only state-run facilities are required to adopt them.

“Some health care providers have implemented them, but not everyone has,” Arreguín said.

Arreguín’s SB 81 would require all health care facilities, including hospitals and community-based clinics, to follow state guidance to limit cooperation with immigration authorities. It would also prohibit providers from granting access to private areas or places where a patient is actively receiving treatment or care, unless there’s a warrant.

Another immigration bill, AB 421, would limit the sharing of local law enforcement information if agents plan to make an arrest within a one-mile radius of a hospital or medical office, a child care or day care facility, a religious institution, or a place of worship. California law enforcement has some discretion to share information with immigration agents when an individual has been convicted of a serious crime or felony.

Kousser said immigration is more complicated for California politicians than health privacy. Although a February poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 7 in 10 Californians think immigrants are a benefit to the state, Kousser said that lawmakers, especially those who won by narrow margins in contested districts, still have to make tough political choices.

Senate Republican leader Brian Jones, who represents a predominantly Democratic district in San Diego, is proposing to change California’s sanctuary policies to require law enforcement to share information with ICE when a person has been convicted of a serious crime.

“When these violent felons are released from local custody, they go right back into the communities that they came from to re-victimize those same immigrant communities,” Jones said.

But Jones acknowledged the need for nuance when it comes to health privacy.

“Look, the bottom line for me on this immigration reform in America is it needs to be humanitarian and it needs to make sense,” Jones said. “And so, if there are areas that we need to protect folks, it might make sense.”

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.