Washington, DC – The House Ways and Means, Education and the Workforce, and Energy and Commerce Committees today released an updated version of the ObamaCare Burden Tracker (#ObamaCareBurden), which reveals the burden on employers and families has increased to almost 190 million hours. The Burden Tracker, first released in February, is a real-time, online resource to help the public keep track of all of the new government mandates, rules, and red tape resulting from ObamaCare.
The burden of ObamaCare is already being felt, even though many provisions of the law, including the requirement for most Americans to buy government-approved health insurance or pay a tax, are not set to take effect until 2014. According to the Obama administration’s own estimates, ObamaCare will require American job creators, families, and health care providers to spend almost 190 million hours per year on compliance.* This burden has increased over 60 million hours since February of this year.
Every hour and dollar spent complying with the Democrats’ health care law are time and resources being taken from spending time with family, growing a business and creating jobs, or caring for patients. Since many small businesses do not employ in-house lawyers and accountants, compliance costs are especially expensive and burdensome. Given the new demands of complying with the law, it is not surprising that over 70 percent of small businesses cite the health care law as a major obstacle to job creation.
What could be done in 189,822,836 hours?
- Mount Rushmore, which took 14 years to build, could be constructed 1,547 times.
- Halley’s comet, seen from Earth once every 76 years, could be spotted 285 times.
- The Empire State building, which took 7 million man hours to build, could be constructed 27 times.
*Based on administration estimates approved by the Office of Management and Budget.