FORWARD MOVEMENT

INCOME TAX REFORM: HJRs 173 AND 174

Lawmakers approved a constitutional amendment for voter consideration that would authorize the eventual elimination of Missouri’s individual income tax. The measure represents the most significant advancement of income-tax reform in Missouri in years and ensures that the future of the state’s tax system will ultimately be decided by voters.

• Asks Missouri voters to decide whether the state should pursue eventual elimination of the individual income tax
• Allows lawmakers to modernize Missouri’s sales tax system as part of future income tax reductions
• Requires local governments receiving additional sales tax revenue to reduce other local taxes

OCCUPATIONAL LICENSING: SB 1233

Expanded opportunities for experienced professionals moving to Missouri by creating a pathway to temporary licensure for individuals with at least three years of work experience in a profession from a state that does not require a license for that occupation.

HEALTH CARE: HB 2372, HB 2974, SB 878, AND SB 1233

• Removed outdated barriers, allowing more patients to establish provider relationships remotely
• Eased restrictions on prescribing medications through telehealth
• Expanded access by allowing providers licensed through reciprocity to serve Missouri patients statewide
• Expanded pharmacist authority to test and treat for common illnesses and prescribe certain medical devices

MORE WORK TO BE DONE

Despite extensive discussion, several major policy proposals were left unresolved at the close of the 2026 legislative session.

EDUCATION REFORM

Legislation intended to address Missouri’s reading crisis passed in the House but died in the Senate. Meanwhile, 42 percent of the state’s fourth graders can barely read—the worst results in 20 years.

• Literacy reform
• A–F school accountability grades

TAX AND BUDGET REFORM

• Property tax reform
• Spending restraint

The debate over Missouri’s future did not end with the adjournment of the legislative session. Voters will soon weigh in on income tax reform, and lawmakers will return next year facing unresolved questions about education, taxation, and government spending. The most difficult reforms still lie ahead.

Download a copy of the report here.

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As I’ve written many times, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Missouri became one of the nation’s leaders in telemedicine access. Patients gained easier access to remote care, providers gained greater flexibility, and many Missourians discovered firsthand how technology can reduce barriers to healthcare.

Unfortunately, when the public health emergency ended, many of those reforms disappeared. Over the past several years, lawmakers have worked to restore some of that flexibility, and this year’s legislation represents another meaningful step forward.

There are currently several bills (House Bill 2372, House Bill 2974, and Senate Bill 1233), awaiting the governor’s signature that would accomplish a few things. Under current law, providers generally must establish a physician–patient relationship before treating someone through telehealth. The new legislation makes that process more flexible by allowing providers to determine when a relationship can be safely established remotely.

The bills also make telemedicine prescribing more practical by focusing on whether a provider has enough information to appropriately diagnose and treat a patient instead of relying on rigid restrictions surrounding questionnaires or telephone-only evaluations. Perhaps even more important, providers licensed through Missouri’s reciprocity system will have clearer authority to provide telehealth services to Missouri patients. That means patients are no longer limited to the providers located near where they live and can more easily connect with healthcare professionals across the country who are willing to treat Missouri patients.

These changes may sound technical, but their impact could be significant. Much of Missouri continues to face healthcare provider shortages, particularly people who live in rural communities or who require care in specialized fields. Patients often wait weeks for appointments, travel long distances for care, or delay treatment altogether. None of this is to say telemedicine can solve every healthcare access challenge, but it can help connect patients to providers more quickly without requiring new facilities or providers to relocate.

The reforms also demonstrate a reality that has become increasingly clear over the past decade: telemedicine is now a key part of the healthcare system. Patients routinely use remote care for follow-up appointments, consultations, behavioral health services, and many other healthcare needs. Providers have invested heavily in telemedicine technology, and patients increasingly expect those options to remain available. As healthcare technology evolves, state laws should continue adapting so Missourians can benefit from those innovations.

All this is to say there is still more work to do. Missouri should continue moving toward a more modality-neutral approach that focuses on the quality of care rather than the technology used to deliver it. Lawmakers should also continue expanding telemedicine options for providers working within their existing scope of practice and further remove barriers that prevent qualified out-of-state providers from treating Missouri patients remotely.

Missouri may not yet be the telemedicine leader it was during the pandemic, but this year’s reforms move the state further in that direction. Addressing Missouri’s healthcare access challenges will require moving beyond outdated assumptions about how care should be delivered and focusing instead on whether patients can safely access the care they need.

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As 2025 comes to an end, we reflect on the progress made this year, from expanding MOScholars and strengthening property rights, to improving telehealth access and supporting Missouri’s entrepreneurs. Despite challenges, including rebuilding after the May 16th tornado, our mission remains the same, ensuring every Missourian has the freedom and opportunity to prosper. As we look to the next twenty years, we invite you to stand with us. Support the Show-Me Institute and help build a lasting legacy of liberty for Missouri. 

Click Here to Support Liberty in Missouri

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Healthcare supply is needlessly limited by regulations that often protect incumbent providers at the expense of patients.

The Solution

Enact free-market reforms to increase the availability of care across the state while also working to lower healthcare prices.

Key Facts

• Missouri needlessly restricts many medical professionals’ scopes of practice and has complex licensing requirements that reduce healthcare access.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Missouri was a national leader in waiving laws and regulations that placed unnecessary limits on healthcare access.

Remove Unnecessary Barriers

“Scope of practice” defines what medical professionals can do in a state, given their training. More treatment options for patients means more competition among providers, which is good for consumers in terms of service and price. This is especially true and important in rural areas where doctors may not always be available or nearby. While Missouri has made some incremental progress on broadening the scope of practice for nurses in recent years, the state still has more restrictive laws than most of the country.

“Telemedicine” is the provision of medical care over the telephone and the internet. For the sake of public health and because many patients felt more comfortable staying at home during the pandemic, Missouri temporarily loosened the regulations that govern who could see a physician online and under what circumstances. Despite the recent expansion of Missouri’s telemedicine laws to include audio-only technologies, there is still work to be done to safely expand telemedicine.

“Licensure” is the manner in which the state regulates certain professions. Unfortunately, licensure can often act as a barrier to entry, especially for qualified healthcare providers from other states. While Missouri’s passage of universal license reciprocity in 2020 was a step in the right direction, the state’s licensing laws are still unnecessarily limiting the number of qualified and willing providers who could otherwise be treating Missouri patients.

Repeal Certificate of Need

Missouri’s Certificate of Need law restricts healthcare competition by requiring many healthcare providers to get state approval before entering new markets or expanding services offered in existing facilities. This restriction hampers market newcomers and puts upward pressure on healthcare prices by restricting supply.

Retake a Top Spot

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Missouri quickly became a national leader in expanding healthcare access. Governor Parson waived numerous laws and regulations regarding scope of practice, license reciprocity, telemedicine, and even Certificate of Need requirements. But in the years since, the waivers were allowed to expire, and Missouri’s legislature has taken minimal action to address the issue.

Missouri’s laws and regulations that specify what the state’s providers are allowed to do and where they can practice play a key role in the recruitment of new state residents and workers. Greater freedom for providers makes job opportunities in a state more desirable for prospective employees. If Missouri’s elected officials are serious about addressing the state’s healthcare access issues, making healthcare employment in Missouri more competitive is required.

Policy Recommendations

• Remove the unnecessary barriers to healthcare access that were previously waived during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as expanded providers’ scope of practice.
• Remove the statutory delays to reciprocity licensure and create additional pathways for licensed healthcare providers in other states to treat patients in Missouri.
• Repeal Missouri’s Certificate of Need laws.

The post Free-Market Healthcare Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Created, at least in part, to help states deal with the reining in of Medicaid provider taxes, the fund guarantees each state $500 million (half of the $50 billion divided by 50 states), but the other half ($25 billion) is going to be awarded based on a scoring system the federal government recently rolled out. Most notable among the recently published scoring criteria are points for enacting many of the free-market healthcare reforms my colleagues and I have been writing about for years.

The scoring system doesn’t just assess demographics or the number of rural hospitals, though they are a big part of the rubric. It also awards states points for policy changes that reduce red tape and open the door for better care. Some of these items include repealing certificate of need (CON) laws, expanding scope of practice for nurses and other healthcare professionals, improving short-term health insurance options, and making telehealth more accessible. Missouri has debated each of these ideas for years, and made some progress, but now enacting these meaningful reforms has additional monetary stakes.

Despite recent incremental progress on the free-market healthcare front, there’s still a lot that Missouri could do. Our CON laws are some of the worst in the country. They stifle healthcare competition by forcing providers to receive permission, often from their competitors, before adding new hospital beds, building new facilities, or even purchasing certain types of equipment.

Scope of practice restrictions are another self-inflicted wound I’ve written a lot about in the past. Missouri gives advanced practice registered nurses less autonomy than in many other states. Our state already has a shortage of healthcare providers, and removing those restrictions would help improve healthcare access, make Missouri jobs more competitive, and ultimately lower costs—all without sacrificing patient safety.

On the telemedicine front, Missouri has made progress by expanding services to audio-only technologies earlier this year but has the potential to go much further. More flexible rules on prescribing and treating patients could dramatically expand access for families, especially for those in rural communities.

At the end of the day, many of the reforms incentivized by the OBBB are policies Missouri should have adopted years ago, but the federal funding offers lawmakers a new reason to finally take action. If Jefferson City seizes this golden opportunity, Missouri can both improve the state’s healthcare policy and score some additional resources that could help in these tough budgetary times. That sounds like a rare win-win to me.

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Senate Bill (SB) 79 will (if Governor Kehoe signs it), among other things, expand the definition of “telehealth” or telemedicine to include audio-only and audiovisual services. On its face, SB 79 may not seem like the biggest or most impactful change, but it addresses a major problem with Missouri’s telemedicine laws that has been needlessly restricting access to care for years.

A few months ago, I wrote about several ways in which healthcare access for Missouri residents could be improved, and abandoning the requirement for video in cases where it isn’t medically necessary was one of the policies I highlighted. There are still large parts of Missouri without reliable broadband internet access, and not everyone has a phone or computer capable of transmitting video. Further, not every medical treatment requires a visual examination (for example, mental health services). Given our state’s well-documented shortage of healthcare providers, any effort to improve healthcare access without sacrificing safety or quality of care is welcome.

It’s easy to forget that back during the COVID-19 pandemic, Missouri ranked among the national leaders in telemedicine access. Various laws and regulations were waived for emergency response purposes, allowing patients to access their providers virtually with more ease than ever before. In turn, telemedicine grew tremendously in both functionality and popularity, among patients and providers alike—until the emergency ended and many of the unnecessary regulatory burdens telemedicine previously faced were allowed to return.

After several years of telemedicine reform nearly reaching but failing to cross the finish line, SB 79’s passage feels like a long time coming. As states across the country continue improving their licensing laws to expand healthcare supply and account for changing technology, Missouri could no longer afford to keep reform on hold. And while the bill doesn’t address all of the areas in which I think Missouri’s telemedicine laws could be improved, it does represent a small, important step in the right direction.

Going into next year, there is still plenty of work to be done to improve Missourian’s access to care. Hopefully, SB 79 is a signal that our lawmakers are dialing up more expansive healthcare reforms for 2026.

The post Missouri Finally Dials in Telemedicine Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Here’s an overview of some of the legislation passed this session (some of which is still awaiting the governor’s signature):

$50 MILLION FOR MOSCHOLARS PROGRAM

• First public investment in the K–12 scholarship program, with $50 million approved in the state budget
• Could triple the number of students served, expanding access to private school, homeschooling, and
specialized support

TELEHEALTH AND HEALTH CARE REFORMS: SB 79

• Improves telehealth access by allowing both audio-only and audiovisual services on any HIPAAcompliant
platform
• Expands health benefit offerings by allowing certain organizations to offer health plans to members,
sometimes referred to as farm bureau or association health plans, without many of the burdensome state
and federal restrictions that apply to traditional insurance offerings

PROTECTING PROPERTY RIGHTS: HB 595 AND HB 343

• Prohibits cities and counties from requiring landlords to participate in voluntary federal housing
programs such as Section 8 housing vouchers
• Bans caps on security deposits and restrictions on tenant screening criteria like income, credit, and
criminal history

CAPITAL GAINS TAX EXEMPTION: HB 594

• Exempts 100% of long-term capital gains from Missouri state income tax for individuals
• Applies to all individual income reported as capital gains for federal tax purposes, starting tax year 2025
• Designed to encourage investment and entrepreneurship by reducing the tax burden on productive
activity

EXPANDING LICENSE PORTABILITY: SB 150

• Expands access to temporary occupational licenses across most licensed professions in Missouri by
repealing the harmful compact exemption, ensuring that more professionals moving to Missouri can
start working without unnecessary delays
• Provides expedited occupational licenses to law enforcement spouses moving to Missouri, allowing
those licensed in another state for at least one year and in good standing to receive a Missouri license
within 30 days of applying

Download a copy of the report here.

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Once again, several bills have been filed that would drastically improve Missouri’s telemedicine laws. As I’ve written before, Missouri was one of the best places in the country for telemedicine a few short years ago. Patients and providers were given a plethora of options for how they communicated, which greatly expanded access to health services across Missouri. But after the emergency declaration for COVID-19 ended, Missouri reinstated a variety of measures that needlessly restrict telemedicine access.

According to a report from the Cicero Institute, Missouri’s telemedicine laws are lacking in three key areas. First, our state is not what Cicero calls “modality neutral.” What this means is that Missouri’s telemedicine laws don’t allow for several modes of communication that have shown to be successful in other states. At least one bill filed this year attempts to move our laws closer to modality neutral by allowing telemedicine services to be provided via audio-only (not video) technologies. This is something mental health providers are very interested in.

Second, Missouri restricts telemedicine access across state lines. If you’re in St. Louis and need a doctor, why shouldn’t you be able to see a provider over telemedicine who practices in Illinois? With so many Missourians struggling to find the healthcare they need, expanding telemedicine access to any licensed provider who’s willing to treat Missourians seems like it should be a no-brainer.

Finally, Missouri makes it unnecessarily difficult for providers to write prescriptions for their patients, especially if they’ve only ever seen them over telemedicine. The process is even more cumbersome if the provider is an advanced practice registered nurse (ARPN). Clarifying the prescribing process and making it easier for APRNs to treat patients via telemedicine should be a benefit to both patients and providers. Fortunately, there are several bills filed this year that tackle these issues.

It’s time for Missouri’s elected officials to recognize that it’s not 2019 anymore. Telemedicine has come an incredibly long way in recent years, yet Missouri’s laws still treat the service as if things are the same as they were pre-COVID-19. Hopefully, this is the year Missouri’s policymakers take notice and take the actions necessary to expand telemedicine access.

The post On Hold for Telemedicine appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass, Elias Tsapelas, and David Stokes join Zach Lawhorn to discuss the start of the 2025 Missouri legislative session. They cover budgetary reform, the need for a Missouri Taxpayer Bill of Rights, the creation of a recession preparedness fund, open enrollment policies, statewide school choice, improvements to Missouri’s school report cards, tax reform, telemedicine, healthcare regulations, and more.

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Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

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Several months ago, I wrote about the positive developments in the world of telemedicine, and the laws Missouri needs to change to bring these benefits to state residents. I was optimistic because several bills expanding the role of telemedicine received hearings near the start of this year’s legislative session, and there was little to no opposition voiced against the changes. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown to me, the telemedicine bills haven’t moved much since their public hearings.

What makes the lack of movement so surprising is that much of what the telemedicine bills do is restore benefits that Missourians enjoyed a few short years ago. As I’ve written before, during the state of emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic, Missouri was one of the national leaders on telemedicine. Because various laws and regulations were waived for emergency response, it was much easier for patients to access their healthcare providers virtually. In response, patients and providers alike grew to value the service—until the emergency ended, and state lawmakers allowed the prior telemedicine restrictions to return.

Two of the telemedicine bills being considered this year seem like no brainers. One expands the definition of “telehealth” to include audio-only technologies. Not everyone has access to the devices or internet required to transmit video, and not every medical service requires a visual examination. Many in the mental health field would like the ability to treat patients over the phone, but state law needs to change for that to be possible.

The second bill makes it easier to establish the physician–patient relationship virtually. Currently, there are concerns about doctors prescribing medications to patients who they’ve never seen in person. Clarifying the process that needs to be followed for safely prescribing medicine remotely seems like it would benefit both patients and providers.

Many Missourians are still struggling with healthcare access, due in large part to a shortage of providers, and telemedicine is one of the best ways to expand the available pool of providers. There are many providers already calling on our general assembly to allow them to see more Missouri patients. There’s still enough time for our lawmakers to act and finally answer the call for improving telemedicine access.

The post Don’t Drop the Call for Telemedicine appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

– The stadium tax debate in Kansas City
– The MetroLink expansion plan advances in St. Louis
– How to make it easier to access virtual health care in Missouri, and more

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Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post KC Stadium Debate, MetroLink Expansion, and MO Loses the Top Spot appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri used to be a leader in telemedicine. During the pandemic, various rules and regulations that stifled telemedicine access were waived, and in their absence, the service grew immensely popular. But today, the waivers have long since expired, and telemedicine is once again too difficult to access. All that has to happen to return Missouri to the top of the national pack on telemedicine access is for the state’s legislature to act.

A little more than a month ago, the Cicero Institute put out a report grading each state on telemedicine access, and offered specific reforms that would help states move up the rankings. Cicero’s conclusions for Missouri were in line with what my colleagues and I have written before: it’s currently too difficult to get some prescriptions via telemedicine, and it should be easier for healthcare providers who aren’t specifically physicians in Missouri to care for Missourians via telemedicine.

Fortunately, there are several bills being considered in this legislative session that would significantly improve Missouri’s telemedicine laws. One approach would make it easier to establish the physician–patient relationship virtually. This would in turn make it easier for providers to prescribe medications to patients they’d never seen in person.

Another approach expands the definition of “telehealth services” to include audio-only technologies. Not everyone has access to a computer, phone, or internet that is capable of transmitting video. Further, not every medical service that could be provided virtually requires the provider to see the patient visually. For example, some psychologists may be able to safely care for patients over the phone.

Perhaps most importantly, both approaches are currently allowed by Medicare in some circumstances and were allowed in Missouri when the telemedicine waivers were in effect a few years ago. None of this is to say that there aren’t some situations where telemedicine treatment may not be appropriate, or that there may be times when an audio-only visit isn’t sufficient. But when telemedicine can safely and appropriately provide a service, Missourians ought to be able to choose that option. Missouri has several years of firsthand data showing that telemedicine access can be expanded without sacrificing patient safety, and more states are recognizing the benefits of the service.

Missouri’s lawmakers should act soon because the state’s healthcare access problem isn’t going away, and expanding telemedicine services is one of the best ways to address it.

The post Catching up on Telemedicine appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri passed universal licensing reciprocity in 2020, meaning licenses from all other states can be used in Missouri. For example, 37 states across the country require licensure to be a makeup artist. Licensing reciprocity means that anyone who has a license in one of the 37 states can have Missouri licensing requirements waived when they move to Missouri to be a makeup artist. This policy lowers barriers to entry for professionals and in turn, increases the supply of workers and services. With increased supply and competition, quality increases while prices decrease.

However, Missouri legislators have taken the DeLorean and gone back in time by sending two bills (Senate Bill (SB) 157 and SB 70) to the governor’s desk. The bills would create a new licensing compact and also have Missouri join two other existing compacts. Licensing compacts allow workers with licenses in one state to practice without additional licensing requirements in other states in the compact. These compacts are essentially a less inclusive version of licensing reciprocity. Former Show-Me Institute Analyst Corianna Baier explained the harm licensing compacts can cause:

[T]he current licensing reciprocity statute states that licensing reciprocity “shall not apply to an oversight body that has entered into a licensing compact with another state for the regulation of practice under the oversight body’s jurisdiction.” On its face, this language indicates that the license compact would overrule licensing reciprocity to the injury of Missouri consumers.

Essentially, a compact would partially cancel out licensing reciprocity. Missouri, like Mrs. McFly, is obsessing over the wrong thing. To use the makeup artist example: with reciprocity, anyone from any state (which has a license) can work in Missouri without having to get a new license; under a compact, only makeup artists from states included in the compact reap the benefits.

As Institute analysts have noted repeatedly, this glitch needs to be ironed out with a language change. If we remove the “compact exception” then Missouri can “restore the timeline” and Missouri will once again have full licensing reciprocity.

At this point you may be wondering: what is the benefit of compacts? The benefit of keeping compacts is that many other states don’t have reciprocity. For example, to practice telehealth in another state, one needs to be eligible in that state. While Missouri lets any license apply to our own state, suppose Arkansas does not have the same rules. Therefore, with the passage of the compact, a doctor in Cape Girardeau could now practice telehealth in Little Rock if Arkansas became a member of the same compact.

State regulatory boards are certainly satisfied with the expansion of compacts in our state, but our policymakers need to look out for the interests of Missouri consumers. Fixing the language that puts compacts and reciprocity in conflict would be a win for everyone in Missouri. Hopefully we will not need two more sequels to solve our issues.

The post Back to the Future on Licensing in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As I’ve written repeatedly, the growth in telemedicine services was one of the few silver linings of the pandemic, and all it took was the government getting out of the way. Prior to 2020, most forms of health coverage, including Medicare and Medicaid, covered telemedicine services only in some circumstances. Various laws and regulations restricted where telemedicine services could be accessed and who could provide them, which drastically limited their benefits. But once the COVID-19 public health emergencies were declared, many of these restrictions were waived, and millions of people nationally tried remote health care for the very first time.

At the end of 2022, as Missouri turned the corner on the pandemic, Governor Parson allowed the telemedicine waivers to expire. Though telemedicine usage was lower at that time than it was during its 2020 peak, it was still far more popular than it was before the pandemic. There is no doubt that some medical services could be better in person, and there are some potential risks for fraud and abuse with remotely offered services. But after multiple years of telemedicine proving its place as a reliable health care option, bringing back old barriers that were shown to drastically limit health care access should have been out of the question.

All things considered, I was optimistic last year that Missouri’s legislature would at least make the waivers permanent, if only because that would maintain a level of access to health care that Missourians had grown accustomed to. But, as with many other priorities this past legislative session, telemedicine reform failed to make it across the finish line.

As this year’s legislative session gets underway, our elected officials have a fresh opportunity to make things right on telemedicine. Giving Missourians the increased options and access they had in the very recent past seems like a perfect place to start.

The post Falling Behind on Telemedicine appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Since long before the COVID-19 pandemic began, my colleagues and I have written about the insufficient supply of health care providers in Missouri and offered a bevy of reforms that would help address the situation. Then, once the coronavirus arrived in the spring of 2020, Governor Parson waived a variety of laws and regulations that were needlessly inhibiting health care professionals from practicing in our state. While this was a positive step, waivers only offer temporary solutions to a permanent problem.

For the nearly 20 months after the waiver was first issued, state health care supply grew because of the reduction of unnecessary burdens. Thousands of Missourians tried telemedicine for the first time. Advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) were allowed to navigate freely across the state to serve patients that needed care. And licensed health care providers from other states were allowed to come to Missouri and easily begin providing care.

While the services described above may not sound out of the ordinary, none of them were allowable under Missouri law prior to 2020. Telemedicine was largely restricted to patients and providers who had met previously in person. APRNs were only allowed to practice medicine within 75 miles of a collaborating physician. And finally, state professional registration boards were not required to recognize the licensure of many practitioners from other states, or at least not without first requiring them to clear too many unnecessary hurdles. Fortunately, Missouri’s legislature acted on that last item and approved interstate license reciprocity in 2020, which drastically improved the licensing process for out-of-state professionals interested in working in Missouri. Unfortunately, easy access to telemedicine and APRNs remained reliant on emergency waivers.

As I wrote less than a month ago, I was optimistic going into the 2022 session that reform was on the way. Missouri was turning the corner on COVID-19, and Governor Parson allowed the emergency order for the pandemic to expire, along with the health care waivers. Rarely is the opportunity for legislative action so apparent and uncontroversial; the legislature simply needed to enshrine the popular status quo from the past two years into law. Instead, health care reform was another victim of this year’s legislative dysfunction, leaving any hope for action once again to the future.

The post Legislature Squanders Health Care Opportunity appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

House Bill 2149 passed the Missouri Legislature this session and, among other things, the bill establishes Missouri as part of the Speech-Language Pathology Interstate Compact. I discussed this idea multiple times while it moved through the legislature as a part of various bills. Luckily, an early problem that I pointed out in the bill text (that the language seemed to override licensing reciprocity) was corrected in the final version that awaits the governor’s consideration.

If signed by the governor, Missourians will be able to benefit from licensing reciprocity and this license compact, expanding options for consumers and workers. Occupational licensing often creates arbitrary barriers for workers and raises prices for consumers, so it’s encouraging to see the legislature reducing these negative effects. Perhaps next year we will see even larger movement in the form of a sunset provision for other occupational licenses and reforms allowing greater use of telemedicine in Missouri.

The post Legislative Results for Licensing Compact appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There haven’t been many silver linings to the COVID-19 pandemic, but one is the rapid growth of telemedicine services. Of course, the ability to see your healthcare provider from the comfort of your own home was available prior to 2020, but various laws and regulations kept the service from becoming a popular option. But once the pandemic began and most of the unnecessary barriers were waived as part of Missouri’s response to the virus, the service surged in popularity.

Now that the pandemic is receding and telemedicine is much more popular, Missouri’s legislature needs to act to allow the service’s growth to continue.  As I wrote a few months ago, state statutes need to be changed to allow health care providers to more easily write prescriptions for patients they’ve seen remotely. It should also be easier to establish a doctor–patient relationship remotely. While telemedicine may not be the answer to every health problem, it’s clear the service provides tremendous value in many circumstances, and government should not stand in the way.

As we near the end of the 2022 legislative session, lawmakers now face the tough task of deciding which bills will or won’t make the cut this year. I hope our elected officials act on what was learned over the past two years (besides how to spend more taxpayer money than ever before) and permanently enshrine the COVID-era telemedicine access provisions into law.

The post Missouri Missing Telemedicine Opportunity appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Prior to the pandemic, state law made it difficult to use telemedicine for a health care provider that you hadn’t already seen in person. In addition, there were rules that impacted which providers could use the service, the level of services they could provide, and even the treatments they were allowed to prescribe. Once these unnecessary restrictions were waived, telemedicine grew tremendously. Today, there are likely many patients who would prefer retaining expanded options for remote care.

Some providers, including many pharmacists, found that they enjoyed the flexibility provided by Missouri’s COVID-19 waivers. In fact, the Missouri Board of Pharmacists is establishing new rules to prepare for the industry’s more remote-friendly future. Further regulatory changes will be required for other professions, such as re-establishing an easy path for doctors from out-of-state and other willing providers to treat Missourians remotely.

Perhaps the biggest remaining hurdle for telemedicine is the Missouri laws that need to be updated. For example, state statute should be changed to make it easier for providers to write prescriptions for patients they’ve seen remotely. If providers were able to safely treat patients remotely for nearly two years while this law was waived, there’s no good reason to bring it back now. Fortunately, there are multiple bills filed that would represent steps in the right direction on this front, and I’m optimistic one will make it across the finish line this legislative session.

While the telemedicine restrictions were waived as a response to a public health emergency, their absence showed that access to health care in Missouri can be improved without risking patient safety. It’s time for Missouri’s legislature to capitalize on this momentum and make the ease of access Missourians have come to enjoy a permanent feature of telemedicine.

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As I’ve written in the past, telemedicine has been an important part of Missouri’s response to COVID-19, and unfortunately, our state is still dealing with the coronavirus. Prior to the pandemic, state rules and regulations made accessing health care providers remotely more difficult than it needed to be. Telemedicine has become an increasingly popular option among providers and patients alike in the 21 months since these restrictions were lifted.

The growth of telemedicine over the past two years has been staggering. Recently, the chief medical information officer for BJC Medical Group testified in Jefferson City that more than 190,000 patients used its telemedicine services in 2020, up from only 4,000 in 2019. That’s a 4,750% increase in one year! Given telemedicine’s rapid growth, our elected officials need to ensure that access to these services can continue.

Of course, the best way to protect access to telemedicine would be for Missouri’s legislature to remove the currently waived regulations permanently. And as we head into the 2022 legislative session, I’m hopeful this will finally be the year our elected officials do just that. But until then, an executive order is the only way to preserve access to telemedicine.

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