This week regulators published just $81 million in annual burdens. There were no reported benefits, but there were more than 2.5 million new paperwork burden hours. A rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on overpayment led the week.                     

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 36
• New Final Rules: 74
• 2014 Significant Documents: 567
• 2014 Total Pages of Regulation: 68,348
• 2014 Proposed Rules: $79.2 Billion
• 2014 Final Rules: $78.5 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.

CMS’s 246-page final rule makes a number of amendments to Medicare and Medicaid by: 1) revising the outpatient prospective payment system, 2) updating hospital reporting, and 3) attempting to recoup overpayments from Medicare Advantage and Part D. The administration estimates a burden on hospitals of approximately $77 million, including more than 2.5 million paperwork burden hours.

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $40.3 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 341 notices. The Office of Management and Budget approved 83 paperwork requirements, increasing the total paperwork burden by 449 million hours.

There were three major changes in paperwork burdens, which is defined as an hourly burden increase or decrease of 500,000 hours or greater. The Internal Revenue Service finalized the largest, a 468 million-hour increase in paperwork.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $157.7 billion in compliance costs and has imposed 36.7 million in net paperwork burden hours. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2014.