Over at Time, Cato adjunct scholar Shirley Svorny offers a proposal that GOP and Democratic presidential hopefuls would be wise to endorse:

Ted Cruz won Iowa’s Republican presidential caucus promising to repeal every word of Obamacare. When pressed for details, he said he would separate insurance from employment, expand the use of health savings accounts, and allow people to purchase insurance across state lines. These are good ideas, ones we’ve heard before. There are, however, a number of other policy initiatives worthy of attention, whether the Affordable Care Act is repealed or not. There’s one simple thing Congress could do that would expand access to high-quality care, especially for patients in rural areas, without costing taxpayers a dime.

Telemedicine providers [use] telecommunication to provide health care over distances [and] have made great strides in improving access to care for rural communities. Telemedicine allows quick access to specialists, as with stroke victims where time is of the essence. Video interactions are expected to replace a sizable chunk of face-to-face office visits.

But the current system of state licensing stands in the way of interstate practice. Physicians must maintain licenses in each state in which they treat patients. Congressional action to define the location of telemedicine services as the location of the physician would allow physicians to practice with a single license in multiple states. It would allow telemedicine to achieve its full potential.

Read the whole thing. Svorny explains this proposal at greater length in a forthcoming Cato policy analysis.