Fair Telehealth Billing Act Targets Surprise Facility Fees for Virtual Visits

Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT) has introduced the Fair Telehealth Billing Act of 2026 — H.R. 9431 — a bill that would prohibit healthcare facilities from charging separate facility fees for telehealth services, except in cases where no professional fee is available to the billing provider.

Facility fees were originally designed to cover the overhead of hospital settings: the building, the equipment, the support staff. Their migration to telehealth — visits conducted from a patient's living room — has struck patient advocates as indefensible, particularly because the fees are often disclosed only after treatment.

A federal answer to a state-by-state patchwork

Several states have already restricted facility-fee billing for virtual care, but the practice persists across much of the country. H.R. 9431 would create a uniform federal prohibition for telehealth — slotting into a broader 2026 congressional focus on price transparency and surprise-billing follow-on legislation.

The bill's fate is uncertain in a crowded calendar, but its existence is itself a signal: as telehealth becomes standard infrastructure, billing practices inherited from brick-and-mortar economics are drawing scrutiny they long avoided. Health systems that bolted facility fees onto virtual visits should expect the question to keep coming — from Congress, from states, and from employers auditing their claims.

Reporting: Office of Rep. Jahana Hayes press release; bill status via GovInfo (H.R. 9431, 119th Congress).