Chairman Pai tours Boise (ID) VA facilities to discuss 'tele-healthcare'

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai swung through Boise (ID) to meet with healthcare professionals at the Veterans Affairs hospital. Chairman Pai discussed “tele-healthcare” with VA officials on the tail end of his tour that touched 30 states. While his visit was not related to network neutrality, Chairman Pai said both were in line with his overall vision for how to connect America. “By the FCC’s standards, some 30 to 34 million Americans, disproportionately rural, don’t have high quality access to the internet, and that is a big problem,” Chairman Pai said. He said he chose Boise specifically because the VA services a number of veterans in rural areas through remote care. “It’s incredible some of the things they are doing at this Veterans Affairs facility,” he said. He said it is incidental that the tour and net neutrality’s end coincided but maintained both efforts share the same message. “I think it just delivers the message that I’ve consistently delivered since I became chair, is that we want to have light-touch regulation in Washington that enables better, faster and cheaper internet services around the country,” he said.