The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against a hospital system that serves low-income people in Washington state, finding that the formula the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) uses to calculate Medicare reimbursements is correct.
The ruling is a victory for the Biden administration.
The case, on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, is Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation, court file 20-1312. Xavier Becerra is U.S. secretary of health and human services. Empire Health Foundation describes itself as “a private health conversion foundation formed in 2008 through the sale of Deaconess and Valley Medical, a nonprofit hospital system in Spokane, Washington.”…