On net, regulators actually reduced costs by approximately $25 million this week. Annualized costs were reduced by $79 million, paperwork hours declined by 1.9 million hours, and there were no listed benefits. Outside of the Federal Register, OIRA discharged three “economically significant” regulations, including major revisions to nutritional labeling, and new energy efficiency standards for refrigeration equipment.                                

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 71
• New Final Rules: 76
• 2014 Significant Documents: 83
• 2014 Total Pages of Regulation: 11,678        
• 2014 Proposed Rules: $3 Billion
• 2014 Final Rules: $5.4 Billion

Health and Human Services published the priciest rule this week, the 2015 edition of electronic health records. The proposal would impose approximately $28 million in annualized burdens, with no paperwork requirements. Most of the costs would be borne by technology developers to prepare new electronic health records technology.      

Affordable Care Act

The IRS finalized a health care rule that actually reduces annual costs by more than $121 million. The regulation bans waiting periods for group health plans longer than 90 days. According to the administration, these changes would allow for the discontinuation of a current collection of information, resulting in a 3.2 million-hour paperwork reduction.

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed an estimated cost of $24.2 billion in private-sector burdens, approximately $8 billion in costs to the states, and 130 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 60.4 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $17.8 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 30,211 employees to file federal paperwork.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $8.4 billion in compliance costs and has imposed more than 13.3 million paperwork burden hours. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2014.