Supreme Court Sides with Hospitals, Overturns Obama-Era Medicare Rule
Source: Law and Crime
by Jerry Lambe | 12:51 pm, June 3rd, 2019
The Supreme Court sided with hospitals on Monday, ending a prolonged legal battle over an administrative policy change to Medicare reimbursement payments. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s majority opinion, while Justice Stephen Breyer was the court’s lone dissenter.
In a 7-1 decision, the court affirmed a 2017 ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which held that the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) violated the Medicare Act by failing to go through the proper rule-changing procedures, and changing the formula used to calculate reimbursement payments to some hospitals. According to the court, proper procedure for such a rule change would have allowed for a public notice-and-comment period prior to any changes being enacted.
In 2014, a number of affected hospitals sued then-President Barack Obama‘s HHS over the policy, which created a new reimbursement formula that reduced hospitals’ payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for serving low-income patients. The policy was originally enacted by the Obama Administration and later defended by the Trump Administration.
HHS argued that rejection of the rule threatened to “undermine HHS’ ability to administer the Medicare program in a workable manner.” According to HHS, the highly technical ruling implicates up to $4 billion in reimbursement payments to hospitals.
Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/supreme-court-sides-with-hospitals-overturns-obama-era-medicare-rule/
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