finance committee will come into order. today, the committee meets with secretary becerra to discuss the year ahead for the department of health and human services. there is much to cover. i will begin with telemedicine. this committee began to open the door at telemedicine in medicare with a landmark chronic care act, authored with senator hatch in 2017. then in 2020, we shoehorned tele-health services into the cares act. in implementing the law, medicare decide to telehealth audio only on a temporary basis during the pandemic. that has been met with wide open arms from people across the country, especially in rural communities. in this year s appropriations bill, our colleague, senator crepe oh, and i push together to extend the audio only flexibility beyond the public health emergency. there is, as you will hear, mister secretary, bipartisan interest and building on the telemedicine progress. we want to make it permanent. we want to make sure that we are not going to turn
secretary xavier becerra testified the finance committee on a range of topics about the this presents 2023 budget request. runs two and a half hours. this runs two and a half hours. finance committee will come into order. today, the committee meets with secretary becerra to discuss the year ahead for the department of health and human services. there is much to cover. i will begin with telemedicine. this committee began to open the door at telemedicine in medicare with a landmark chronic care act, authored with senator hatch in 2017. then in 2020, we shoehorned tele-health services into the cares act. in implementing the law, medicare decide to cover telehealth audio only on a temporary basis during the pandemic. that has been met with wide open arms from people across the country, especially in rural communities. in this year s appropriations bill, our colleague, senator crapo and i push together to extend the audio only flexibility beyond the public health emergency. there