Alaska Rivals Make Separate Proposals to Address USF Rural Healthcare Funding Concerns
Alaska Communications (ACS) and General Communications (GCI) proposed separate plans to address USF rural healthcare (RHC) funding. ACS urged the FCC to alleviate the "crisis" while crafting a long-term plan to "right size" the annual budget, which the telco believes…
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should be hiked from $400 million to $800 million. As a "stop gap measure," it suggested in a filing posted Monday in docket 02-60, the agency could tap "headroom" in the $2.279 billion Lifeline low-income budget to meet growing RHC demand, or tap undisbursed E-rate school and library funding. ACS proposed a rulemaking to increase RHC funding as if the $400 million budget adopted in 1997 was adjusted annually for inflation and start indexing it for inflation. Rival GCI called for a "stable, long-term" RHC budgetary solution, citing pro-rata budgetary reductions for rural healthcare providers (HCPs) in extremely high-cost areas as creating "unmanageable uncertainty." It said the FCC decision in funding year 2016 to allow HCPs in remote Alaska to reduce charges by pro-rata reduction amounts is unsustainable. GCI agreed the RHC cap should increase to reflect inflation since 2017, but said "other measures may also be necessary." It proposed prioritizing payments to “Highly Rural” HCPs while increasing their minimum payment requirement in the Telecommunications Program (one piece of RHC support), said a filing on a meeting with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai.