On the classic TV show “Star Trek,” space was the “final frontier.” In the political world, it’s the byzantine world of the federal regulatory agencies that is the final frontier. While we struggle with health care reform, energy reform and entitlement reform, no reform may be more critical to the health of our country than regulatory reform.
The truth is that we will never be able to successfully reform our health care system — or our energy and environmental policy, or entitlements, or education or, quite frankly, to tackle any other challenge facing this country — until we begin the difficult process of regulatory reform.
When it comes to health care reform, patients, providers, insurance companies and employers all face a tangled web of new and ever-changing regulations as a result of the passage of Obamacare. Some business owners, confused and frustrated, are openly talking about just paying the fines for noncompliance. They are making the business decision that noncompliance might be easier than trying to comply with the new regulations.
While the health care regulations have left the relevant players confused, regulations in the energy and environmental arena have not just created confusion; they have become a bureaucratic dead end. Thousands of jobs have been lost, and energy prices have increased dramatically, as a result of inaction by regulatory agencies charged with overseeing energy exploration.
The truth is that, intertwined in almost every major challenge we face is a complex bureaucracy — a bureaucracy that often undermines well-intended efforts to reform whatever sector that agency oversees.
This is an important first step. Few know more about the unintended, and too often job-killing, consequences of the regulatory bureaucracy than the folks who deal with these agencies every day.
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