The Supreme Court seemed to give a cool reception to the Biden administration during oral arguments this morning in a case in which a health care system was seeking higher government reimbursements for treating low-income patients. The case, Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation, is court file 20-1312. Xavier Becerra is U.S. secretary of health and human services. The issue in the case is how the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) figures out special Medicare payments to “disproportionate share hospitals,” sometimes called “DSH hospitals,” whose patients are largely low-income persons. The so-called Chevron doctrine, under which courts defer to agency interpretations of the statutes they enforce, was also in play. In Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that an executive agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers is entitled to deference unless Congress has indicated otherwise. Elderly and disabled people receive health …