The paperwork shredder is back
Washington is dusting off a big-government-meets-small-government experiment: a Trump executive order from late January that says for every new regulation proposed, 10 should get the boot, with the net cost of new rulemaking pushed below zero. That’s not exactly subtle.
Not just regulations anymore
This time, the scope is wider than the usual bureaucracy bingo card. The push now covers:
- formal regulations
- guidance documents
- memoranda
- policy statements
- other similar directives
So if you were hoping this was just a tweak to one corner of the rulebook, nope. It’s more like a wholesale spring cleaning.
Why investors should care
Healthcare-heavy businesses love predictability almost as much as they love reimbursement. If this effort actually trims the volume of rules and guidance, it could reduce compliance costs, speed up product launches, and generally make life a little less annoying for companies that spend half their lives decoding federal language.
But there’s a catch: less regulation can also mean more uncertainty about what comes next, especially if agencies start rewriting the playbook on the fly. In other words, the market may cheer lower friction, then immediately ask, “Cool, but what’s the new friction?”
Big picture: if this turns from slogan into actual policy, it could become a real margin story for parts of healthcare. If not, it’s just another Washington promise with a very ambitious spreadsheet.