Conservative group: New healthcare rules add $9B in costs, 10M hours in paperwork

The healthcare proposal is meant to help states implement Medicaid eligibility changes. Over a five-year period, the rule will cost roughly $2.6 billion and some 518,432 hours of paperwork, AAF concluded in the analysis. Benefits from the rule were not quantified.

{mosads}Beyond the cost, the group noted that regulators only gave members of the public 17 days to comment on the 474-page rule.

The FDA rules stem from the 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act, which aims to reduce cases of food-borne illness. AAF estimates those rules together could cost up to $6.5 billion over seven years, and lead to more than 10 million hours of paperwork burden.

The FDA maintains the benefits related to cutting down on illness outbreaks outweigh the costs of the proposed regulations.

Sam Batkins, the Forum’s director of regulatory policy, suggested that the government may need to check its math.

“With more than $9 billion in possible costs in one week, consumers, farmers, and businesses might also question the administration’s benefit-cost calculus,” he wrote in the analysis.