Farm Bill includes help for rural hospitals, rural broadband - Entrepreneur Generations

At 807 pages, the new Farm Bill takes a bit to read through. We've discussed the SNAP debate and industrial hemp legalization, but here are a few more provisions of interest to rural Americans:

The Farm Bill could grant the U.S. Department of Agriculture more authority to dispense $350 million a year in grants and loans for local rural broadband buildout, but only for areas where service speeds are less than 10 mbps downloads and 1 mbps uploads. That's lower than the Federal Communications Commission's threshold for broadband, which is 25 mbps for downloads and 3 mbps for uploads, Dave Nyczepir reports for Route Fifty. Also, the USDA launched a pilot project Thursday that will allocate an extra $600 million from the 2018 omnibus bill for encouraging private investment in rural broadband, but it also uses the 10 mbps rule. That means some rural residents could be caught in the middle, with speeds too high for federal aid but too low to get good internet service.

Another problem with awarding such grants and loans is that the FCC's map of internet service provider coverage may be inaccurate.

"The Farm Bill does, however, direct grant funding more toward places with low population densities, while using loans for those with higher densities—a win for rural areas that limits providers’ ability to reserve service for more populated communities," Nyczepir reports. "Instead, the Farm Bill will enable co-ops to both modernize the electric grid and offer retail broadband to consumers." Rural areas that do well with the initial funds could be rewarded with more federal funding.

Another facet of the Farm Bill is that it could help rural hospitals. "The bill headed to President Donald Trump's desk includes a provision that would allow rural hospitals to refinance substantial debt through lower-interest loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture," Susannah Luthi reports for Modern Healthcare. "Rural hospital lobbyists acknowledge the provision won't change much overnight for the 44 percent of rural hospitals which operate at a loss. The USDA requires applicants to show levels of financial viability that the really struggling hospitals likely can't currently meet."

Even so, the provision could "transform finances" for rural hospitals, allowing them to later get lower-interest USDA loans, Luthi reports.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2GiYUxM Farm Bill includes help for rural hospitals, rural broadband - Entrepreneur Generations

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