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Thursday, October 20, 2011

955 Pages of Rules to "Eliminate" Excessive Federal Health Regulations

I kid you not.  The U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has announced that "It’s time to cut the red tape.  Our new proposals eliminate unnecessary and obsolete standards and free up resources so hospitals and doctors can focus on treating patients.”

And they've done this by issuing six new regulatory documents, ranging in length from just five pages up to 696 pages.  The total number of pages in all six documents? 955!

If this is what reducing red tape looks like, I'd hate to see what they do when they decide they need more regulatory wrapping.

3 comments:

HSNY said...

so you are saying that all those changes designed to make it easier for hospitals to run their own affairs are wrong?

John R. Graham said...

NOt at all: What I'm stating is that it should not take almost a thousand new pages of rules to revoke obsolete rules!

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Anonymous said...

In fairness, in the 696-page document, the actual new rules don't begin until page 623. The first 622 pages are the explanation of how they came up with the new rules.