> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://broadbandbreakfast.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # A $50 Billion Health Fund and Rural America’s Internet Gaps - URL: https://broadbandbreakfast.com/a-50-billion-health-fund-and-rural-americas-internet-gaps/ - Published: 2026-10-08T00:32:27.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T00:34:42.000Z - Description: The funds come from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Republicans passed in July 2025 - Author: Broadband Breakfast - Tags: Telehealth, BBLO, Live, Dr. Arshia Khan, Andrew Solomon, Reid Plimpton, Robbie Blish, MCD Global Health, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, University of Minnesota Duluth, National Digital Inclusion Alliance, YMCA, Rural Health Transformation Program, HIPAA, Sunbeam, Remote Patient Monitoring, #with-siderail, Maine, Vermont, New Jersey, #no-flux WASHINGTON, Oct. 7, 2026 — Awards from a $50 billion federal rural health fund included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act from July 2025 are now paying for digital health care records and home monitoring devices, said panelists at a [Broadband Breakfast Live Online session Wednesday](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/broadband-breakfast-on-october-7-2026-connectivity-and-medicine/). But whether that remote care reaches a patient still depends on the connection in the patient's home or pocket. Maine's first-year share of that fund is $190 million, according to **Andrew Solomon**, a senior program manager at MCD Global Health, the Maine public health nonprofit administering the work. About $40 million of those funds will upgrade digital patient records at roughly 80 health care organizations, and another $12 million goes to about a dozen telehealth projects. [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/29/97/29976d9d-89ea-4c77-8c0b-0e8a0eafed35/content/images/2026/10/bai_rough_2026_1001.jpg)](https://payments-na1.hubspot.com/payments/7TyXGqH4bm?referrer=PAYMENT%5FLINK&ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) [***Sign up for Broadband and AI in the Next Congress on Dec 1!**](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/broadband-and-ai/) [Early Bird Registration Until Oct. 16! ](https://payments-na1.hubspot.com/payments/7TyXGqH4bm?referrer=PAYMENT%5FLINK&ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) One such project sends patients with high blood pressure or heart failure home with internet-connected cuffs and scales that alert a nurse when readings turn dangerous. Those nurse alerts travel only over a working internet connection, a recurring them at the session, on connectivity and medicine. ### *First-year rural health money is still moving* That $50 billion fund is the [Rural Health Transformation Program](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/states-map-out-plans-for-50-billion-rural-health-program/), created by Section 71401 of the 2025 budget law. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal health insurance agency, distributes $10 billion a year from fiscal 2026 through 2030\. All 50 states won [first-year awards](https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-announces-50-billion-awards-strengthen-rural-health-all-50-states?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) in December 2025, averaging $200 million. Those awards ranged from about $147 million for New Jersey to about $281 million for Texas. After the December awards, states needed federal approval of their spending plans before the money could flow, said **Reid Plimpton**, a program manager at MCD Global Health. Much of the program's first-year funding has not fully gone out, Plimpton said, even as the second year begins. States must obligate, or legally commit, first-year funds by Oct. 30, according to a [timeline](https://www.kff.org/medicaid/a-closer-look-at-the-50-billion-rural-health-transformation-program/?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) from KFF, a health policy research group. ### *Maine is using the money to change how care is delivered* Some of Maine's record upgrades add ambient scribing, AI software that listens to an appointment and drafts the clinician's notes, Solomon said. Ambient scribing cuts what he called "pajama time," the evening hours doctors spend finishing charts at home. Off the coast, 12 year-round island communities have no bridge to the mainland and no health care of their own. The Maine Seacoast Mission, a nonprofit serving those islands, sends a boat called the Sunbeam to them. The boat provides year-round medical care and telehealth services to the state’s unbridged outer islands. Solomon described the boat as "essentially a floating community center." With federal funding, MCD built telehealth backpacks that island residents reserve online and pick up at a town hall or school. Each backpack holds connected tools such as a blood pressure cuff and a pulse oximeter. Patients can use the kits at home only if they have a connection, Solomon said. ### *For many patients, the connection is a cell phone* Many lower-income rural residents rely on a cell phone as their only internet service, said **Robbie Blish**, director of public safety connectivity initiatives at AMBCOPS, a Vermont nonprofit focused on rural mobile coverage. For phone-only patients, the cell network is their only link to remote care. Residents can log speed tests and dead spots with a free AMBCOPS app called YOWIE Patrol. "We have to know what your baseline is in terms of connectivity before you can really start to build on these other infrastructure ideas," said Blish, also a retired police chief. Telemedicine appointments are also more likely to be kept. Rural in-person appointments carry a no-show rate of about 20 percent, compared with about 2 percent for telemedicine, Blish said, citing a Vermont project that tested libraries as telehealth sites. ### *Libraries can bridge gaps, but one panelist rejected them as the end state* Public libraries and YMCAs can host private telehealth visits while home service catches up, said Plimpton, who also works with the Northeast Telehealth Resource Center, one of 12 federally funded regional centers that advise health care providers on telehealth. He called libraries and YMCAs "a happy medium as we wait for the fiber." Libraries and YMCAs are no substitute for home service, said **Arshia Khan**, a professor and director of graduate studies in computer science at the University of Minnesota Duluth. "Medicine should be proactive rather than being reactive," she said. Rural patients often lack nearby specialists, Khan said, so that care has to arrive remotely. Teleradiology, in which a distant radiologist reads scans, and telestroke programs, which link rural emergency rooms to stroke specialists, both depend on connectivity. Her research pairs humanoid robots for dementia care with wearable sensors, and those sensors help only if their data arrives in real time. "We should be able to bring broadband to every individual in every part of America," Khan said. ### *Licensure and AI rules are still catching up* State licensure law follows the patient. A clinician treating someone in another state must meet the rules where that patient is located, Plimpton said. Roughly 16 interstate compacts, agreements that let a license from one state count in others, now cover different professions. Artificial intelligence is reaching rural clinics through tools such as ambient scribing. Khan warned that AI tools can carry bias and expose private patient data, and she called for rules on how health systems use AI. "We need guardrails around this," she said. Patient health information held by providers and insurers is protected by HIPAA, the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. AI raises "real HIPAA concerns," Khan said, and health systems need "some real policies" to navigate them. Because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services controls funding and billing rules, the agency can steer AI adoption in health care better than any private company, Khan said. The deeper problem, Solomon said, is that the health care system itself predates these digital tools. "So much of health care is designed and was built to be in person," he said, "and it hasn't been redesigned yet."