Telecommunication Policies May Have Unintended Health Care Consequences

In our April 24, 2014 Health Affairs Blog post “It’s Hard to Be Neutral About Network Neutrality for Health,” we discussed network neutrality and its potential impact on health care. With the new Trump administration, we are seeing changes to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) stance about network neutrality (NN) and other important telecommunications policies that may significantly impact the delivery and pace of innovation in health care. The FCC, under the guise of “restoring internet freedom,” believes that big telecom giants should be allowed to treat their business partners more favorably than other companies. The FCC is planning to overturn the landmark 2015 NN rules put in place by former Chairman Tom Wheeler requiring that all online content be treated equally. In the last week of April 2017, the new chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, announced plans to make network neutrality voluntary. Then, on May 18 the FCC voted 2-1 to move forward with this roll back of network neutrality protections. In our previous post, we discuss how the Internet has basically become a public good and should be treated as such with regards to regulation and laws. History suggests that the ideas of treating Internet access as a public good are not new. For example, there are laws preventing owners of essential public goods, such as shipping companies, bridges, and ports from abusing their position. These same principles should also apply to the Internet because through it...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured Health IT Health Professionals Hospitals EHRs net neutrality rural health Telehealth Source Type: blogs