ObamaCare's Rules Exempt From President's Regulatory Review
Last year, President Obama ordered the various agencies in his administration to conduct a regulatory review designed to weed out overly burdensome rules. But Obama's Department of Health and Human Services is now confirming that the thousands of pages of rules and regulations created by last year's health care overhaul will be exempt from review. From The Hill:
The Health and Human Services Department won't be revisiting regulations that implement the new healthcare law during its review of potentially burdensome regulations.
Sherry Glied, assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at HHS, said the rules are too new for a second look. She testified Monday at a hearing on President Obama's executive order directing agencies to identify and revise regulations that can be streamlined or eliminated.
Glied said HHS is conducting that review but won't include regulations that implement the healthcare law. Federal departments assess the costs and benefits of their regulations before issuing them. Because healthcare reform rules were issued so recently, she said, HHS is confident in its analysis of their impacts and doesn't need to review those rules again.
"Nothing has changed to make us look at them" again, Glied said.
Nothing, eh? Not the widespread rejection of the proposed rules governing ObamaCare's accountable care organizations? Not the consternation over the law's medical loss ratio requirements, which the administration has already waived for Maine after noting that the rule "has a reasonable likelihood of destabilizing the Maine individual health insurance market?" Not the 1,000-plus individual waivers the administration has granted allowing businesses and unions to get out of a number of the law's specific requirements? No, I guess there's no reason at all to think that any of the health care law's rules might be in need of review.
