Upcoming Rules Pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: The 2012 Unified Agenda

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Maeve P. Carey
Analyst in Government Organization andManagement

Michelle D. Christensen
Analyst in Government Organization and Management

ThePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, as amended) was signed intolaw by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. ACA is a comprehensiveoverhaul of the health care system that includes such provisions as theexpansion of eligibility for Medicaid, amendments to Medicare that areintended to reduce its growth, an individual mandate for the purchase of health insurance,and the establishment of insurance exchanges through which individuals and families canreceive federal subsidies to help them purchase insurance. As is the case withmany laws that Congress passes, ACA contains many instances of delegationof rulemaking authority to federal agencies.

One way in which Congress can identify upcoming rules and regulations that willbe issued pursuant to ACA is by reviewing the Unified Agenda of FederalRegulatory and Deregulatory Actions (hereafter, Unified Agenda), which ispublished by the Regulatory Information Service Center (RISC), a componentof the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), for the Office of Managementand Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The UnifiedAgenda lists upcoming activities, by agency, in three separate categories:

• “active” actions, including rules in the prerule stage (e.g., advancenotices of proposed rulemaking that are expected to be issued in the next12 months); proposed rule stage (i.e., notices of proposedrulemaking that are expected to be issued in the next 12 months, or forwhich the closing date of the comment period is the next step); and finalrule stage (i.e., final rules or other final actions that are expectedto be issued in the next 12 months); 
• “completed” actions (i.e., final rules or rules that have been withdrawnsince the last edition of the Unified Agenda); and 
• “long-term” actions (i.e., items under development that agencies do notexpect to take action on in the next 12 months). 

All entries in the Unified Agenda have uniform data elements, including the departmentand agency issuing the rule, the title of the rule, the RegulationIdentifier Number (RIN), an abstract describing the nature of the actionbeing taken, and a timetable showing the dates of past actions and aprojected date for the next regulatory action. Each entry also indicates thepriority of the regulation (e.g., whether it is considered “economicallysignificant” under Executive Order 12866, or whether it is considered a “major”rule under the Congressional Review Act).

The most recent edition of the Unified Agenda, which was published on December21, 2012, is the fourth edition of the Unified Agenda since enactment ofACA. In this edition, agencies reported 23 proposed rules and 18 finalrules that they expect to issue pursuant to ACA within the next 12 months.Agencies also reported a total of 22 long-term regulatory actions and 20 completedactions.

The Appendix of this report lists the upcoming proposed and final rulespublished in the 2012 Unified Agenda in a table.


Date of Report: February 1, 2013
Number of Pages: 29
Order Number: R42946
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