The Week in Regulation: November 5-9
A lone final rule implementing parts of the Affordable Care Act highlighted another slow week for regulatory activity. Thanks to regulatory cost savings from an Occupational Health and Safety Administration regulation, costs increased by less than $4 million this week.
Regulatory Toplines
- New Proposed Rules: 49
- New Final Rules: 61
- 2012 Significant Documents: 532
- 2012 Total Pages of Regulation: 67,532
- 2012 Proposed Rules: $16.4 billion
- 2012 Final Rules: $215.2 billion
ObamaCare
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final rule for “End-Stage Renal Disease Prospective Payment System.” The regulation includes mostly transfer payments from the federal government to Medicare providers, including a $320 million negative transfer. The direct costs are minimal paperwork burdens: $12.4 million and more than 250,000 burden hours.
Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed an estimated $20.4 billion in private-sector burdens, approximately $7.2 billion in costs to the states, and 63.5 million annual paperwork hours.
Dodd-Frank
There were no notable Dodd-Frank rulemakings this week. Click here to view the total estimated compliance costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage the legislation has produced more than 58.7 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $15 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 29,355 employees to file federal paperwork.
A Note on Notices
This week federal agencies published 444 notices. In these notices, agencies typically request new or revised paperwork burdens from the Office of Management and Budget. These notices are generally not final, merely requests with a comment period.
Agencies requested 34 million paperwork burden hours, the equivalent of forcing 17,000 employees into red tape compliance. The associated costs of these burdens: $142.8 million, or $4.20 per hour.
Total Burdens
At the current pace, the published regulatory burden for 2012 will exceed $267 billion. Since January 1, the federal government has imposed $231.7 billion in compliance costs and more than 135.3 million annual paperwork burden hours. For comparison, it took 7 million hours to build the Empire State Building.
Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2012.
