Mike Thompson: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation, and I want to thank all…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation, and I want to thank all my colleagues who worked in a bipartisan manner to make it happen. Patients and providers in my district and across the country will benefit from these important improvements, and I am proud to support them. Two provisions come from bipartisan bills that I have worked on for a number of years. The first helps patients get the devices they need while keeping fraudulent providers out of Medicare. The change we are debating today will ensure that any documentation created by device experts will be included in a patient's medical record to support the physician's directions. The second provision that I authored comes from the comprehensive telehealth packages that I have been working on with Representative Black and our colleagues from the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Welch and Mr. Harper. This change will allow for virtual visits and remote patient monitoring for kidney failure patients living at home. Letting these patients utilize telehealth ensures that they can access the services they need from the setting that they prefer: their homes. This bill is another step forward in the expansion of telehealth, but we can do a lot more. Our telehealth bills offer a menu of options for moving forward.…”