ACOs, CLASS, and the Expansion of Bureaucratic Power
As previously noted, the final rules on accountable care organizations were released this morning. One point I neglected to mention in my earlier e-mail about regulations: The final rule took 11 pages of bill text (Section 3022 of the 2,000-plus page Obamacare) and converted them into nearly 700 pages of bureaucrat-written regulations, requirements, and mandates.
Compare that to the controversy surrounding the CLASS Act, and the statements of advocates of the program who this week called for it to continue, despite Secretary Sebelius’ statements that she did not see a path forward to implementation. The advocates either 1) want to give HHS MORE authority to fix the program unilaterally, and/or 2) say she should plow ahead anyway, despite the legal concerns the Secretary raised.
So, in the same week that found a CMS bureaucracy turning 11 pages of bill text into nearly 700 pages of regulations, we have liberal groups advocating to give HHS even more power than they were granted by Obamacare. That in and of itself speaks volumes to the problems with the sprawling federal bureaucracy, and in particular with top-down, government-driven approach to health “reform” epitomized by Obamacare.