Obamacare exchanges, which launch in four days, will cost $5.3 billion and impose 16 million hours of paperwork on businesses to ensure they comply with the hefty regulations, according to a new report.
American Action Forum regulatory policy director Sam Batkins, who authored the study, found that “despite the many delays, administrative lapses, and staggering costs, few have examined the regulatory burdens of the new health care exchanges.”
The paperwork burden of Obamacare exchanges will cost states and private organizations $5.3 billion a year. For the feds themselves to handle the massive influx of paperwork from exchanges, they’ll need 8,300 employees working solely on exchange paperwork every year.
Batkins founds that the Department of Health and Human Services’ requirements alone cost companies $35.3 billion.
“Many Americans are familiar with tax forms,” Batkins wrote, “but the Department of Treasury imposes ‘only’ 1,404 forms.” And those forms are seen as so complicated that a whole industry has arisen to help consumers and companies navigate their way through the pile.
But when Obamacare exchanges are added to the mix, the grand total of federal health care forms will rise to 4,115.
The cost of the government running health care has exploded since President Obama took office. According to the AAF report, the time spent complying with HHS regulations grew by over 50 percent from 2008 to 2012. That’s $13.6 billion extra the Obama administration is forcing states, patients and private entities to pay.
While Obamacare exchange regulations will cost everyone but the federal government $5.3 billion every year, just paying for HHS to sift through Obamacare paperwork with cost taxpayers another $3.8 billion on top of that, every year.
“These results should not be surprising,” Batkins concluded. Obamacare “is a massive piece of legislation that involves eight separate agencies, dozens of new taxes, and trillions of dollars in federal and state outlays.”
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