A new study by The Brattle Group found that the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) generated more savings for taxpayers than it cost. Healthcare savings generated by the low-income program alone more than offset its annual burden to taxpayers, undermining claims that the program was dismantled as an act of fiscal efficiency.

The ACP, part of the 2021 infrastructure bill, provided 23 million low-income households a $30 broadband discount every month. It provided a larger $75 a month discount for low-income residents of widely underserved tribal areas.

The ACP also provided low-income Americans a $100 subsidy to help them afford a laptop, tablet or a desktop computer.

Generally viewed as a rare bipartisan success story, the ACP took direct aim at a primary problem across U.S. broadband: affordability.

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But the program was unceremoniously allowed to expire in 2024 after GOP leaders including House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to even bring funding bills to the House floor for a vote, despite widespread support from industry, consumer groups, and even then Republican Ohio Senator JD Vance.

Many rural healthcare facilities are struggling to keep their doors open. Some have been shuttered. Add to that the looming federal budget crisis threatening to end Medicare payments for telehealth and the urgency of what a coalition of Vermont healthcare leaders, librarians, and state broadband officials are doing comes into view. 

It’s called VITAL VT (Virtual Integration for Telehealth Access through Libraries in Vermont) – an exploratory effort being launched with a $10,000 grant from the Leahy Institute For Rural Partnerships, working in collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical Center and the Vermont Library Association.

The aim is to leverage the state’s unprecedented deployment of community-owned fiber networks and create a scalable, community-centered telehealth model. 

“We’re really looking to find any way to make any of our community members in Vermont get access to care – easier, better, quicker. So we’re wondering if telehealth (hubs) might be the right answer for that, if we’re able to put it right in people’s libraries, right in their own towns,” Roz King, chief of research for emergency medicine at the University of Vermont, told local CBS affiliate WCAX.

Data-mapping ‘Healthcare Deserts’

In speaking with ILSR this week, King said what spurred the initiative was a talk given by one of UVM’s medical students who noted how Vermont was beginning to see “healthcare deserts where in some rural counties PCP’s were aging out and no one was there to provide healthcare (services).”

Many rural healthcare facilities are struggling to keep their doors open. Some have been shuttered. Add to that the looming federal budget crisis threatening to end Medicare payments for telehealth and the urgency of what a coalition of Vermont healthcare leaders, librarians, and state broadband officials are doing comes into view. 

It’s called VITAL VT (Virtual Integration for Telehealth Access through Libraries in Vermont) – an exploratory effort being launched with a $10,000 grant from the Leahy Institute For Rural Partnerships, working in collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical Center and the Vermont Library Association.

The aim is to leverage the state’s unprecedented deployment of community-owned fiber networks and create a scalable, community-centered telehealth model. 

“We’re really looking to find any way to make any of our community members in Vermont get access to care – easier, better, quicker. So we’re wondering if telehealth (hubs) might be the right answer for that, if we’re able to put it right in people’s libraries, right in their own towns,” Roz King, chief of research for emergency medicine at the University of Vermont, told local CBS affiliate WCAX.

Data-mapping ‘Healthcare Deserts’

In speaking with ILSR this week, King said what spurred the initiative was a talk given by one of UVM’s medical students who noted how Vermont was beginning to see “healthcare deserts where in some rural counties PCP’s were aging out and no one was there to provide healthcare (services).”

Many rural healthcare facilities are struggling to keep their doors open. Some have been shuttered. Add to that the looming federal budget crisis threatening to end Medicare payments for telehealth and the urgency of what a coalition of Vermont healthcare leaders, librarians, and state broadband officials are doing comes into view. 

It’s called VITAL VT (Virtual Integration for Telehealth Access through Libraries in Vermont) – an exploratory effort being launched with a $10,000 grant from the Leahy Institute For Rural Partnerships, working in collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical Center and the Vermont Library Association.

The aim is to leverage the state’s unprecedented deployment of community-owned fiber networks and create a scalable, community-centered telehealth model. 

“We’re really looking to find any way to make any of our community members in Vermont get access to care – easier, better, quicker. So we’re wondering if telehealth (hubs) might be the right answer for that, if we’re able to put it right in people’s libraries, right in their own towns,” Roz King, chief of research for emergency medicine at the University of Vermont, told local CBS affiliate WCAX.

Data-mapping ‘Healthcare Deserts’

In speaking with ILSR this week, King said what spurred the initiative was a talk given by one of UVM’s medical students who noted how Vermont was beginning to see “healthcare deserts where in some rural counties PCP’s were aging out and no one was there to provide healthcare (services).”

Many rural healthcare facilities are struggling to keep their doors open. Some have been shuttered. Add to that the looming federal budget crisis threatening to end Medicare payments for telehealth and the urgency of what a coalition of Vermont healthcare leaders, librarians, and state broadband officials are doing comes into view. 

It’s called VITAL VT (Virtual Integration for Telehealth Access through Libraries in Vermont) – an exploratory effort being launched with a $10,000 grant from the Leahy Institute For Rural Partnerships, working in collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical Center and the Vermont Library Association.

The aim is to leverage the state’s unprecedented deployment of community-owned fiber networks and create a scalable, community-centered telehealth model. 

“We’re really looking to find any way to make any of our community members in Vermont get access to care – easier, better, quicker. So we’re wondering if telehealth (hubs) might be the right answer for that, if we’re able to put it right in people’s libraries, right in their own towns,” Roz King, chief of research for emergency medicine at the University of Vermont, told local CBS affiliate WCAX.

Data-mapping ‘Healthcare Deserts’

In speaking with ILSR this week, King said what spurred the initiative was a talk given by one of UVM’s medical students who noted how Vermont was beginning to see “healthcare deserts where in some rural counties PCP’s were aging out and no one was there to provide healthcare (services).”

Many rural healthcare facilities are struggling to keep their doors open. Some have been shuttered. Add to that the looming federal budget crisis threatening to end Medicare payments for telehealth and the urgency of what a coalition of Vermont healthcare leaders, librarians, and state broadband officials are doing comes into view. 

It’s called VITAL VT (Virtual Integration for Telehealth Access through Libraries in Vermont) – an exploratory effort being launched with a $10,000 grant from the Leahy Institute For Rural Partnerships, working in collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical Center and the Vermont Library Association.

The aim is to leverage the state’s unprecedented deployment of community-owned fiber networks and create a scalable, community-centered telehealth model. 

“We’re really looking to find any way to make any of our community members in Vermont get access to care – easier, better, quicker. So we’re wondering if telehealth (hubs) might be the right answer for that, if we’re able to put it right in people’s libraries, right in their own towns,” Roz King, chief of research for emergency medicine at the University of Vermont, told local CBS affiliate WCAX.

Data-mapping ‘Healthcare Deserts’

In speaking with ILSR this week, King said what spurred the initiative was a talk given by one of UVM’s medical students who noted how Vermont was beginning to see “healthcare deserts where in some rural counties PCP’s were aging out and no one was there to provide healthcare (services).”

Many rural healthcare facilities are struggling to keep their doors open. Some have been shuttered. Add to that the looming federal budget crisis threatening to end Medicare payments for telehealth and the urgency of what a coalition of Vermont healthcare leaders, librarians, and state broadband officials are doing comes into view. 

It’s called VITAL VT (Virtual Integration for Telehealth Access through Libraries in Vermont) – an exploratory effort being launched with a $10,000 grant from the Leahy Institute For Rural Partnerships, working in collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical Center and the Vermont Library Association.

The aim is to leverage the state’s unprecedented deployment of community-owned fiber networks and create a scalable, community-centered telehealth model. 

“We’re really looking to find any way to make any of our community members in Vermont get access to care – easier, better, quicker. So we’re wondering if telehealth (hubs) might be the right answer for that, if we’re able to put it right in people’s libraries, right in their own towns,” Roz King, chief of research for emergency medicine at the University of Vermont, told local CBS affiliate WCAX.

Data-mapping ‘Healthcare Deserts’

In speaking with ILSR this week, King said what spurred the initiative was a talk given by one of UVM’s medical students who noted how Vermont was beginning to see “healthcare deserts where in some rural counties PCP’s were aging out and no one was there to provide healthcare (services).”

Many rural healthcare facilities are struggling to keep their doors open. Some have been shuttered. Add to that the looming federal budget crisis threatening to end Medicare payments for telehealth and the urgency of what a coalition of Vermont healthcare leaders, librarians, and state broadband officials are doing comes into view. 

It’s called VITAL VT (Virtual Integration for Telehealth Access through Libraries in Vermont) – an exploratory effort being launched with a $10,000 grant from the Leahy Institute For Rural Partnerships, working in collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical Center and the Vermont Library Association.

The aim is to leverage the state’s unprecedented deployment of community-owned fiber networks and create a scalable, community-centered telehealth model. 

“We’re really looking to find any way to make any of our community members in Vermont get access to care – easier, better, quicker. So we’re wondering if telehealth (hubs) might be the right answer for that, if we’re able to put it right in people’s libraries, right in their own towns,” Roz King, chief of research for emergency medicine at the University of Vermont, told local CBS affiliate WCAX.

Data-mapping ‘Healthcare Deserts’

In speaking with ILSR this week, King said what spurred the initiative was a talk given by one of UVM’s medical students who noted how Vermont was beginning to see “healthcare deserts where in some rural counties PCP’s were aging out and no one was there to provide healthcare (services).”

Many rural healthcare facilities are struggling to keep their doors open. Some have been shuttered. Add to that the looming federal budget crisis threatening to end Medicare payments for telehealth and the urgency of what a coalition of Vermont healthcare leaders, librarians, and state broadband officials are doing comes into view. 

It’s called VITAL VT (Virtual Integration for Telehealth Access through Libraries in Vermont) – an exploratory effort being launched with a $10,000 grant from the Leahy Institute For Rural Partnerships, working in collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical Center and the Vermont Library Association.

The aim is to leverage the state’s unprecedented deployment of community-owned fiber networks and create a scalable, community-centered telehealth model. 

“We’re really looking to find any way to make any of our community members in Vermont get access to care – easier, better, quicker. So we’re wondering if telehealth (hubs) might be the right answer for that, if we’re able to put it right in people’s libraries, right in their own towns,” Roz King, chief of research for emergency medicine at the University of Vermont, told local CBS affiliate WCAX.

Data-mapping ‘Healthcare Deserts’

In speaking with ILSR this week, King said what spurred the initiative was a talk given by one of UVM’s medical students who noted how Vermont was beginning to see “healthcare deserts where in some rural counties PCP’s were aging out and no one was there to provide healthcare (services).”

In the latest episode of the Building for Digital Equity Podcast, ILSR's Digital Equity Coordinator Jordan Pittman sits down with Dana Northcraft, Natalie Birnbaum, and Emily Schacter from the Reproductive Health Initiative for Telehealth Equity and Solutions (RHITES).

The trio of guests from the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit begin by connecting the dots between broadband access and the emergence of telehealth as a way to improve health outcomes and deliver significant healthcare cost-savings.

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From there, they focus on "maternity and reproductive healthcare deserts," as well as the language and affordability barriers that severely limit the ability of many communities and financially-strained households to reap the benefits of telehealth.  

The episode concludes with a call to action as Dana, Natalie, and Emily make the case for why access to broadband should be seen as not just a critical utility for participation in a digital world, but as an important human right essential for achieving better health outcomes.

Tune in below:

Inline image of telehealth consultation courtesy of RHITES website