A Blistering Review of ObamaCare Regulations
In her June 2011 testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Policy and Evaluation Sherry Glied assured legislators that HHS considered the full range of benefits and costs for these regulations and issued regulations only when benefits exceeded costs. “We‘ve already weighed their benefits and costs and shown that their benefits considerably exceed their costs,” she stated.
Our review of the eight major ACA regulations issued as “interim final rules” in 2010 suggests otherwise. These eight rules encompassed nearly all the major components of the ACA scheduled to go into effect prior to 2014. Executive Order 12866 requires agencies to consider a wide variety of alternative solutions and regulate only after determining that the benefits of the regulation justify its costs (including qualitative factors). We find, however, that the regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) for these regulations were seriously incomplete, often omitting significant benefits, costs, or regulatory alternatives. Analysis of equity was cursory at best.
In short, the regulatory analyses for these regulations were insufficient to guide decisions or inform the public. Based on these RIAs, we cannot tell whether the regulations will produce the promised benefits for the projected costs, whether alternative approaches could have produced greater benefits at lower costs, or even whether the regulations satisfy any well-defined concept of fairness.
I am sure they deserved every blister.
I can’t think of any federal regulation that has produced the promised “benefit” for the projected cost. Why should Obamacare be any different?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the agency intentionally omitted significant benefits, costs, or regulatory alternatives as they considered some of these regulations.