Regulators added $612 million in regulatory costs this week. Benefits were $9 million, compared to annualized costs of $203 million; paperwork grew by 1.9 million hours. The administration’s “Medicaid Mega Rule” led the week and consumed 405 pages in Friday’s Federal Register. The per capita regulatory burden for 2016 is $247.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 53
• New Final Rules: 71
• 2016 Total Pages of Regulation: 27,982
• 2016 Final Rules: $63.3 Billion
• 2016 Proposed Rules: $16.4 Billion

The American Action Forum (AAF) has catalogued regulations according to their codification in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR is organized into 50 titles, with each title corresponding to an industry or part of government. This snapshot will help to determine which sectors of the economy receive the highest number of regulatory actions.

The administration published its final “Medicaid Mega Rule” this week. AAF reviewed the rulemaking here and here. From a burden perspective, the final rule differs little from the proposed version. The regulation imposes $126 million in annual costs and more than 1.9 million paperwork burden hours. On an annual basis, it is $15 million more expensive than its proposal.

The administration also finalized a health care rule to improve fire safety at Medicare and Medicaid participating health care facilities. The rule imposes modest annual burdens, just $8.6 million in costs.

Finally, the Department of Transportation proposed safety standards for buses, including “anti-ejection glazing” to aid in passenger safety during rollover accidents. The measure is estimated to save up to 1.6 lives per year (equivalent to nearly $18 million in benefits), against $190,000 in costs.

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $52.8 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 187.2 million annual paperwork hours (170.6 million from final rules).

Dodd-Frank

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 76.5 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $39.2 billion in direct compliance costs.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $79.7 billion in compliance costs ($63.3 billion in final rules) and has imposed 32.4 million in net paperwork burden hours (16 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.