Dozens more Obamacare regs slated to be unveiled in 2014
The Congressional Research Service has identified dozens of new regulations being written in various stages by agencies that will be applied to enforce Obamacare.
There is no estimate of what the regulations will cost. That little tidbit of information doesn't seem to be at the top of the list of things we should know about government regulation before they're approved.
The Congressional Research Service identified some 43 proposed and final rules related to the landmark healthcare law that are now under construction at various agencies and are on track to be issued within the next 12 months.
An additional 13 long-term rules are making their way through the regulatory pipeline but will not be finalized in 2014, according to the report.
Produced for Congress, the study is designed to give lawmakers a clearer sense of the work that remains at Department of Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies responsible for implementing ObamaCare's provisions.
"Having a sense of what rules agencies are going to issue and when they are going to issue those rules can help Congress to provide oversight over the regulations that are issued pursuant to the ACA," according to the report, submitted earlier this month.
Among the 2014 rules in the works are 20 draft regulations, including measures governing hospital payments, new requirements for longtime care facilities and a provision meant to guard against discrimination under the ACA.
Twenty-three final rules are slated to come out this year, including requirements that chain restaurants and vending machines post notices explaining how many calories are in the food they sell to the public.
Those vending machine regs are likely to drive many small companies out of business. The industry depends on changing choices in the machines on a regular basis and some owners have already complained that the time it would take to switch out the calorie notices every time they changed the machine's content would be prohibitively expensive.
Did I mention that one of the fastest growing jobs categories in Obama's America is regulatory compliance officer?