Abstract

As politicians revisit the merits of health insurance reform and courts deliberate its constitutionality, government regulators are busily working on the wonky details of implementation. The Affordable Care Act leaves vast swaths of regulation for various agencies to prescribe, most notably the Department of Health and Human Services. Infamously (or perhaps apocryphally, since I'm certainly not going to bother counting), the statute contains more than a thousand commands to the effect of, "the Secretary shall decide." This massive delegation of authority is unavoidable in any attempt to comprehensively reform, yet preserve, our Byzantine health insurance system.Throughout this regulatory nativity, the government ..