Federal Regulations Now Cost Almost $1.9 Trillion, Study Finds

Do we live in a democracy, or a regulatory dictatorship? It’s hard to tell sometimes, especially after reading the latest annual report on the regulatory state issued by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
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Report: Obama Admin’s Effort to ‘Eliminate Red Tape’ Adds $16 Billion in Costs

The Obama administration’s effort to eliminate red tape added $16 billion in regulatory costs, according to a new report by the American Action Forum obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
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Great news: the EPA’s new smog rules will only cost 40 times as much as they said

We recently discovered that EPA chief Gina McCarthy is coming for your air conditioners because she’s pretty worried about ozone. (We’ll leave aside for now the fact that the chemicals used in modern air conditioners don’t affect that particular issue.) It’s still on her mind and the agency already put forward some new rules to cut down on smog.


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Minimum wage hike: Hidden costs of compensation

Oregon currently has the second-highest minimum wage in the nation, behind only Washington State. That is due largely to the 2002 passage of Measure 25, a Constitutional amendment that raised the wage and requires it to be increased annually to adjust for inflation as it is measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Since then, Oregon’s minimum wage has increased, from the $6.90 per hour level set in 2002, to the current $9.25 per hour...


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Medicaid enrollment under ObamaCare soars, raising cost concerns

Several states that chose to expand Medicaid eligibility under ObamaCare now are facing deadline pressure to pay for it, the result of more signups than anticipated -- and, a looming reduction in how much of the bill the federal government will cover.

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Overhead costs exploding under ObamaCare, study finds

Five years after the passage of ObamaCare, there is one expense that’s still causing sticker shock across the healthcare industry: overhead costs.
The administrative costs for healthcare plans are expected to explode by more than a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next decade, according to a new study published by the Health Affairs blog.
The $270 billion in new costs, for both private insurance companies and government programs, will be “over and above what would have been expected had the law not been enacted,” one of the authors, David Himmelstein, wrote Wednesday.


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Obamacare: If You Like Your Facts ... You can Keep Them

President Barack Obama recently asserted, "Thanks in part to the Affordable Care Act, also known as 'Obamacare,' the cost of health care is now growing at the slowest rate in 50 years." So, you may be losing your health care coverage, and you may end up paying more -- but, hey, rising costs are slowing overall "in part" because of Obamacare.

True, as Obama says, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- the agency that administers Medicaid and Medicare -- "estimated that ... (in) the three years since Obamacare passed, we've seen the slowest growth in health care costs on record."

But is this due "in part" to Obamacare?

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