Study: Popular Low-Income Broadband Program Killed By Trumplicans Saved Taxpayers More Money Than It Cost
from the to-dumb-to-understand-downstream-benefits dept
Last year Trumplicans killed a popular program that provided poor people with $30 off of their monthly broadband bill. The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was unsurprisingly very popular, with more than 23 million Americans benefitting at its peak.
At the time, the GOP claimed they were simply looking to save money. The real reason, of course, was that the ACP was popular with their constituents (the majority of ACP participants were in red states) and they didn’t want Dems to use it as an election season issue.
But a new report by The Brattle Group (spotted by telecom industry consultant Doug Dawson) found that the $7-$8 billion annual taxpayer cost of the program generated between $28.9 and $29.5 billion in savings thanks to expanded access to affordable internet and remote telehealth services.
Dawson notes:
“The savings from using telemedicine instead of live doctor visits are dramatic. They estimate that the savings from one telemedicine visit saves the equivalent of 3.5 years of ACP support for a Medicaid recipient.
The report cites estimates that telemedicine visits are 23% less expensive than in-person visits. They cite studies that show that telemedicine visits for cancer patients save between $147 – $186 for each visit. Telehealth visits with medical specialists average $120 less, and virtual urgent-care visits save $141 compared to in-person clinic visits.”
The study found downstream savings on other fronts as well, whether it’s the higher lifetime earnings generated by improved academic achievement, or the simple cost benefits of the ability to engage in remote work from within fiber-connected rural communities. Tribal communities also benefitted with a boosted $45 monthly discount off of their monthly broadband bill.
But the study estimates that the telemedicine benefit to the federal government alone is four times the cost of ACP. Even if the study’s optimistic by half, it was more than enough to justify the cost of the program.
But because guys like Trump, Musk, and his team of 4chan Doge brats genuinely aren’t particularly bright, they often don’t understand that many taxpayer-funded programs have very real downstream benefits. It’s simply too complicated for bullies in love with their own pseudo-intellect who long ago confused ignorant elbow-swinging with efficiency.
At the time the ACP was repealed, we noted how most of the press failed to make the GOP own its unpopular decision, with most stories framing the program as a casualty of ambiguous partisan acrimony. Dem messaging on such a slam dunk issue (“the GOP made your broadband more expensive and hurt your access to health care”) was also borderline nonexistent during the last election.
Filed Under: ACP, Affordable Connectivity Program, broadband, education, fcc, low income, telecom, telehealth
Comments on “Study: Popular Low-Income Broadband Program Killed By Trumplicans Saved Taxpayers More Money Than It Cost”
Right, but it didn’t make people within the inner circle any more money, and that’s the real problem with it.
Good grief
Sometimes it must feel like you’re just shouting into the void.
Thanks for keeping going.
Techdirt is one of very few voices of clarity and consistency coming out of the usa atm.
Sure, it may have been a fiscal net positive. But it also made poor people less miserable. I’ll be homeless eating cardboard before I support my money going to poor people.
Re: Name says it all
You sound pretty miserable yourself, friend!
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*whooooooooooosh!*
I wonder what excess death rates will say about this suicide of an administration, if and when you come out the other side.
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They’ll stop counting just like Idaho did for maternal mortality.
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Well, that’s why one of the first things they did was shut down recording and reporting those numbers.
Re: When dealing with a post-truth cult 'reality' doesn't really matter
Oh not at all, the rate increase will be 0.0% at worst, because if you refuse to acknowledge a problem and claim anyone who tries to point it out is a liar spreading Fake News then that means the problem doesn’t exist.
Those are huge ranges
The original gives the same ranges as Karl, but I think nobody proofread either version. 28.9 dollars to 29.5 billion dollars is one hell of a range. Well, I suppose an annual cost of 7 dollars is fine to save 28.9, but I don’t believe any government program has ever cost so little.
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Except that every time the figure you quoted comes up in either of linked the reports, it is indeed the 28.9 to 29.5 billion dollars figure (accurately) quoted by Karl, meaning both figures are in the billions as pointed out by AC. If anybody here requires proofreading, it’s you. Maybe go back to school and brush up on your reading comprehension?
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Misunderstanding Utilities
Free stuff is always popular with the recipients. That’s not a good measure. A much better question would ask how popular is it with the folks paying for it.
Those same downstream advantages are enjoyed by ANYONE who pays for their own internet service. It turns out that most utilities are indeed very useful. Water delivered through a pipe is quite a time and energy savings compared to walking down to the river to scoop up some water with a bucket and then carrying it back.
That someone saves time and money from a utility is never in question. The question is who should pay for it. The recipients should work full time and pay for their own utilities themselves.
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We live in a society.
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The exorbitantly wealthy. Remember that Elon Musk once said he had enough money to “solve” the world hunger crisis if someone would give him a plan, but didn’t follow through when someone gave him a plan. All that wealth tied up in the hands of a small minority of people—who mostly sit on their wealth like a Tolkien dragon sits on a gold hoard—does nobody any good.
What would you say to people who can’t afford basic utilities despite working full-time hours every week?
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Woooosh!!!!!11111111|||||||
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Let’s pay for with the blood of your children and family just like you think everyone else should.
Fuck off and die nazi.
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There’s a classic economics book about this sort of thing: On the wealth of nations by Adam Smith.
You should give it a read; not only might you learn something, but it would be relevant to the argument that you’re trying (and failing) to make.
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This is a terrible question. Taxpayers who don’t suffer from cancer might not care about cancer research, but its still a public good to research cures and treatments for cancer.
Poor people getting access to broadband internet have better chances of improved education and job skills, thus higher paying jobs, thus more taxes to put back in to benefit society (and also continue to enrich the wealthy, greedy assholes whose shoes you like polish with the back of your tongue).
We’ve already explained to you how the ISPs are already publicly subsidized and they already pocketed money they were paid to install more lines and they already utilize public infrastructure they don’t pay for. You continue to pretend like internet access actually costs as much as the ISPs charge.
This is the most tone deaf statement possible on this topic.
Broadband access allows poor people to get better degrees and skills to get better jobs to be able to work full time and pay for their own utilities. You don’t get more work out people by cutting their legs off, you myopic blowhard.
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TVH, I suffer from my sister’s cancer, and I don’t give a stuff about cancer research. Now do you get how inaccurate suffering language can be?
Re: But then
It did say Unsurprisingly… but what you’re saying is that you shouldn’t be paying taxes for society or anyone’s benefit, only yourself. Which is fine, but should we disband our military and shut down the infinite services you are subbed to? Even apart from that let’s examine the core motivation.
And what is the value to our society of people who only denigrate and want to erode it. Nobody likes taxes, minimizing it is human. I feel saddened when I hear of some programs benefits only for some, but they must really, really need it to survive.. I’m not a religious person per say but I believe in doing the right thing for others..
It’s not free, problems with your reading comprehension?
It’s more popular to pay less for something you normally can’t afford, especially for something a household absolutely need in todays society.
Are you really suggesting that if the government subsidize intern for low income areas to the tune of $7-8 billion and get a return of around $29 billion it shouldn’t do it because anyone can enjoy utilities? Seriously?
And if they can’t afford it, they can’t function well in society and becomes a net negative for the government. This is basic national economy, make sure your citizens are productive even if you have to subsidize some things because the return of that is many times more than you put in.
Said by someone who aren’t actually paying full price for all their utilities since some of them are federally subsidized. Buy go ahead, make sure you are paying exactly what everything actually costs without government subsidies and I’ll make sure to chip in a couple dollars for a hot meal when you become homeless.
Do you actually grasp factual reality Koby or are you as vacuous as you sound?
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He does. He just chooses to be cruel and heartless and eternally opposed to the public good because his right-wing influences (which are the only influences he has) think empathy is a weakness and “the cost of living” isn’t a phrase worth thinking about. He prefers everyone to see him as a professional contrarian who wants every public service to be privatized (and those who can’t afford those services to die) rather than see him as someone with a sense of humanity towards anyone who isn’t a white Christian cishet male.
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If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Taibbi and Greenwald, it’s that if you stratch a professional contrarian you’ll find a Russian asset underneath.
But the trolls here aren’t even that. They’re amateur-hour contrarians at best.
Lessons never learned
If I had a nickel for every news story I’ve seen in my life along the lines of “study finds [insert program name here] cut by the incoming [insert name here] administration was [saving or returning] [insert large number of dollars conveniently measured in millions or billions] for American taxpayers” I’d have an unusually large number of nickels.
Of course, we know the cruelty is the point. It’s about making undesirables” “go away”.
They probably do understand.
But I don’t think their goal is to “reduce wate” or to achieve overall cost savings. The goal is to prevent money going to the poor / undeserving / proles / minorities.
Wasting taxpayer money on rich white dudes is 100% OK.
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So very many MAGAts voted for their Dear Leader thinking that he’d stop the government from ‘wasting’ it’s money on the Others they hate so much, not realizing that to the ones they were voting for if you’re not a rich white dude you are an Other.
This should say a telehealth visit saves up to 3.5 months. Not years, not even close.
I suggest we start refering to these people as “Banana Republicans”, because that’s where they’re taking us.
Never any shortage of funds for Israel though