The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted an Order waiving its $150 million cap on support requests in the Rural Health Care (RHC) Program for upfront and multi-year commitments of up to three years. The funding, which helps rural health care providers deliver critical health care services, has a cap for these types of payments, which was implemented to safeguard the RHC Program from large annual fluctuations that could inhibit short term support requests to rural health care providers. The FCC announced that the waiver will apply to funding requests for FY 2019. According to the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), of the $719.4 million in total demand for FY 2019, $209.43 million was requested for upfront and multi-year commitments. Thus, the approximately $60 million in excess of the cap will be permitted by this waiver.
