ObamaCare Regulations Now Up To 1,147,271 Words

ObamaCare Watcher notes, "1,147,271 Words of Obamacare Regulations Published So Far—270% as Long as the Text of the Statute":

If you thought that Obamacare was long, it is only a fraction of the length of the regulations.

Obamacare contains over 700 directives for HHS and other agencies to implement Obamacare.

We went through and counted all of the Obamacare regulation documents published so far. We found that the number of pages in regulations are already 114% as long as the number of pages in the Obamacare statutes! The statutes contain 961 pages compared to 1,093 pages of regulations.

But regulations published in the Federal Register are published in small font, three columns wide.

What is more telling is the word count comparison. The Obamacare statutes together contain 425,116 words. Compare that to 1,147,271 words published so far in Obamacare regulation documents. The regulations are 270% as long as the statute itself.

The 1.1 million words in Obamacare regulations published so far are only a fraction of the regulations yet to come...

(Link via David Catron.)

This is just a manifestation of a much broader problem as outlined in the latest issue of The Economist, "Over-regulated America". The Economist is more sympathetic to ObamaCare than I would be, but it does note the following tidbit:

Every hour spent treating a patient in America creates at least 30 minutes of paperwork, and often a whole hour.