On December 10, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report examining the regulation writing process for the national health care reform law.  The report summarizes each rule and notes where in the Federal Register the rule can be found, what agency authored the rule, and when the rule takes effect.  The report examines the 18 regulations that the federal government has released since the law’s passage, noting that most of the rules were not explicitly required.  The CRS also notes that 12 of the rules had public comment periods only after the publication of initial rules, suggesting that the Obama Administration was justified in limiting comment in nearly all cases.

From the report:  

More than 40 provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, P.L. 111-148, March 23, 2010, as amended) specifically require or permit federal agencies to issue regulations to implement the act’s requirements. This report describes the final rules implementing PPACA that had been published in the Federal Register during the first 8½ months of implementation.

As of December 7, 2010, at least 18 final rules had been issued implementing certain provisions in PPACA. An Appendix to this report lists these 18 final rules, including a summary of their requirements and their effective dates. PPACA specifically required that some of the rules be published. Other rules cited particular sections of PPACA as the statutory authority, but those sections did not specifically require the agencies to accomplish the underlying policy objectives through the rulemaking process. Most of the final rules were issued without a prior notice of proposed rulemaking, with the agencies often invoking the “good cause” exception in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA, 5 U.S.C. §551 et seq.) for not allowing the public to comment before the final rules were issued. In several of the rules, the issuing agencies also stated that Congress had specifically authorized the issuance of final rules without first issuing a proposed rule. Most of the final rules permitted post-promulgation public comments, with the comment periods ending on or after the dates that the rules took effect. Most of the rules were considered “economically significant” (i.e., with an annual impact on the economy of at least $100 million), so the agencies provided estimates of their costs, benefits, and transfers.

Full Report: Initial Final Rules Implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PDF | 234 KB)

Congressional Research Service. (2010). Initial final rules implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Copeland, C.