Regulators published $400 million in total regulatory costs this week, thanks to a proposal regulating Accountable Care Organizations. Annualized costs were $129 million, compared to $124 million in benefits, and 115,000 paperwork burden hours.                       

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 40
• New Final Rules: 63
• 2014 Significant Documents: 598
• 2014 Total Pages of Regulation: 74,014
• 2014 Proposed Rules: $80.4 Billion
• 2014 Final Rules: $80.4 Billion

AAF has catalogued regulations according to their codification in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR is organized into 50 titles, with each title corresponding to an industry or part of government. This snapshot will help to determine which sectors of the economy receive the highest number of regulatory actions.

The Department of Labor published a final rule to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The measure implements President Obama’s Executive Order (13,672), but applies only to federal contractors and subcontractors. These businesses would incur minor paperwork burdens, mainly because they’d be required to amend “the tag line for solicitations and job advertisements.”  

Affordable Care Act

The administration published a proposal under Medicare to regulate Accountable Care Organizations (ACO). The rulemaking estimates roughly $130 million in annual burdens on ACOs, primarily through direct increases in their operating costs because of increased patient participation; the proposal also estimates $124 million in annual benefits.  

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $41.2 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 162.1 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 63.8 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $32.7 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 31,940 employees to file federal paperwork.

A Note on Paperwork

This week federal agencies published 454 notices. The Office of Management and Budget approved 91 paperwork requirements, decreasing the total paperwork burden by 752,661 hours.

There was one major change in paperwork burdens, which is defined as an hourly burden increase or decrease of 500,000 hours or greater. The Department of Education decreased paperwork by 975,374 hours.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $160.8 billion in compliance costs and has imposed 41.3 million in net paperwork burden hours. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2014.