It’s all over the news, including this blog, there is a danger of money running out for the Affordable Connectivity Plan (ACP). This means many households would lose their broadband subsidies. The Benton Institute for Internet & Society recently posted an article (from John B. Horrigan , Angela Siefer and Blair Levin) on the dangers of letting the ACP go, including concrete economic and healthcare examples. I’ve turned some of their examples into bullet points:

• The ACP’s role in helping to keep people online has an important consequence: it increases the value of integrating digital tools into approaches to solve social and economic challenges. Maternal mortality rates in the United States offer a concrete example. The United States has alarming trend lines in this arena, with an increase of 60% in maternal mortality between 2019 and 2021. At the behest of Congress, the Federal Communications Commission has mapped where maternal mortality is highest—and the maps of places where new mothers die at the highest rates look a lot like maps of where household internet subscription rates are low.
• Fortunately, there are promising ways to address maternal mortality that rely on home internet access for new mothers. In Louisiana, Ochsner Health has had success in using digital tools to monitor at-home blood pressure and other risk factors for pregnant women, resulting in fewer hospital admissions and caesarean section procedures. Such remote maternity online monitoring has reduced unexpected neonatal intensive-care unit admissions by 27%.
• Telehealth is associated with people maintaining their participation in opioid treatment programs and telehealth can reduce the cost of health care service delivery with only marginal increases in in-person visits. Given the amount the United States spends on Medicare and Medicaid, universal, sustainable broadband should be seen as a huge opportunity to chart a necessary path to improving health outcomes while lowering costs. The benefits enumerated in these examples fall off steeply if target populations occasionally lose service.
• A 2021 study showed that in areas where discount internet plans were available, there was a positive impact on employment rates and earnings of eligible households. With greater labor force participation and decreased probability of unemployment, low-income households saw a $2,200 annual earning boost from subsidized internet programs.
• Indeed, a recent review of studies on broadband’s economic impact found “that broadband adoption positively affects employment.” For the ACP specifically, recent analysis finds that each dollar of the ACP subsidy generates $3.89 in spending for households. Overall, it is hard to escape the conclusion that home broadband adoption is an engine of economic opportunity for households in most need.