On June 25, 2024, Paragon’s latest paper by Dr. Joel Zonberg, Restoring Good Guidance Practices: How to Restrain the Administrative State and Make Government Better, was referenced in Inside Health Policy.
From the article:
Should the Supreme Court weaken or overturn the Chevron doctrine, federal agencies will likely rely more heavily on guidance documents to avoid judicial oversight, health policy experts say. A report from the Paragon Health Institute argues for the restoration of Trump-era good guidance practices (GGPs) to force agencies to be more transparent in their development of sub-regulatory guidance documents.
Paragon’s Joel Zinberg, the paper’s author, argues guidance development should have safeguards, such as notice and public comment and centralized review, and the documents should have searchable databases.
Guidance is increasingly abused to get around enforcing existing laws, Zinberg says in the report. He references the Obama Administration Treasury Department’s delay of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate and its accompanying tax-penalty for noncompliance. The Treasury delayed these policies by blog post and IRS guidance. Zinberg also cites how a pronouncement from former President Barack Obama and HHS guidance delayed the ACA requirement that insurers only sell ACA-compliant health insurance policies.
Zinberg’s suggestions come as SCOTUS is expected to either overturn or limit the longstanding Chevron doctrine, under which courts have given agencies wide latitude to interpret vague statutory language, as soon as this week.
