What it does.
For a Kansan in a frontier county, a Medicare video visit with a specialist can be the difference between getting care and going without. The CONNECT for Health Act keeps that option open by locking the pandemic-era Medicare telehealth coverage into permanent law. Before COVID, Medicare telehealth was tightly restricted: rural-only, originating-site requirements, narrow set of services. The pandemic waivers removed those restrictions; the CONNECT bill makes that removal permanent instead of running out on the next extension fight.
Doc is a cosponsor. He has framed it as a rural-access measure and a Critical Access Hospital sustainability question: keeping subspecialty consults available in the local hospital by video reduces transfer pressure on already-thin rural staffing. The bill is in the Senate Finance Committee.
Kansas has the highest count of Critical Access Hospitals in the country, 82 of the state's 124 total hospitals. Telehealth permanence is how a rural Kansan keeps access to specialists their local CAH can't keep on payroll.