The Department of Health and Human Services issued more than three times as many major regulations than any other agency during the Obama administration, according to a new report.
The American Action Forum released a report Tuesday finding that HHS has the greatest opportunity to roll back major regulations to comply with Donald Trump's executive order to eliminate two regulations for every new rule proposed.
"As federal agencies comb through their existing regulations to comply with the one-in, two-out executive order on regulatory reform, regulators at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will have plenty of major rules to review," writes Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute.
The report noted that HHS issued 180 major regulations, those that total $100 million or more in costs, since 2009. The next closest agency is the Securities and Exchange Commission, which totaled 54 major rules in Obama's two terms.
Both agencies were responsible for enacting the Obama administration's signature pieces of legislation, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank financial reform, resulting in increases in federal regulation. In fact, financial reform resulted in the SEC issuing more major regulations than the Environmental Protection Agency under Obama's tenure.
The American Action Forum identified six major regulations HHS could target to achieve the Trump administration's goal of rolling back onerous rules. One Obamacare regulation relating to Medicaid expansion and the federal health exchanges carries an annual $1.3 billion compliance cost.
The report noted that HHS has issued more than $73 billion in regulatory burdens and imposed at least 142 million new paperwork hours, largely as a result of Obamacare. Paperwork hours tripled from 453 million to 1.3 billion in the past decade.
The American Action Forum said Republican health care reform, which has passed the House of Representatives, "would do a great deal to eliminate costly regulatory requirements."
"Beyond the targeted ad hoc approach of revising and repealing specific old rules, fundamental reform could generate the same savings that the [Affordable Care Act] ACA generated in costs," Batkins writes. "Repealing the entirety of the ACA won't make the sunk costs from the past seven years disappear, but there is little doubt it could produce billions of dollars in cost savings."
Though the SEC is exempt from the executive order, the agency could follow the lead of the FCC, which has voluntarily agreed to work to reduce its regulatory grip. The FCC most recently voted to begin rolling back Obama-era net neutrality regulations.
The American Action Forum identified five major rules the SEC could address, including the Dodd-Frank pay ratio rule, which requires corporations to disclose how much more the CEO makes than its average employee. The pay ratio rule carries $1.8 billion in costs alone to comply.
"Much of the hunt for duplicative or onerous past rules will require a thorough program evaluation," Batkins concludes. "It's likely the older the rule, the more it has generated in sunk costs, limiting the economic gains of repeal. However, with 180 major rules from HHS and 54 from SEC, there are plenty of options as regulators scour their regulatory slate for potential cost savings."