466
Scalia, J., dissenting
prior determination of reasonable 1984 GME costs (albeit for the limited purpose of calculating future reimbursement rates), reducing them to $5,916,868.
In light of the procedures already in place for determining a hospital's reasonable 1984 GME costs when § 1395ww(h) was enacted, that provision's reference to a hospital's 1984 GME costs "recognized as reasonable under this subchapter" cannot reasonably be interpreted to authorize the Secretary to determine a hospital's 1984 GME costs anew. It is true, as the Court points out, that in isolation the phrase "recognized as reasonable" is ambiguous: it "might mean costs the Secretary (1) has recognized as reasonable for 1984 GME cost-reimbursement purposes, or (2) will recognize as reasonable as a base for future GME calculations." Ante, at 458. But as we have insisted, the words of a statute are not to be read in isolation; statutory interpretation is a "holistic endeavor," United Sav. Assn. of Tex. v. Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Ltd., 484 U. S. 365, 371 (1988). Viewing the words "recognized as reasonable" in their entire context, they cannot reasonably be understood to authorize a new composite cost determination.
To begin with, it should be borne in mind that § 1395ww(h)(2)(A) does not provide directly for a determination of composite costs "recognized as reasonable." It provides for a determination of the average per full-time resident of costs recognized as reasonable. If this is to be interpreted as an authorization for a new "recognition of composite-cost reasonableness," so to speak, it is a most oblique and indirect authorization—so oblique and indirect as to be implausible. That new computation of composite costs, rather than the relatively mechanical averaging of those costs per full-time resident, would have been the major feature of the provision, so that one would have expected it to read something like "the Secretary shall determine each hospital's reasonable direct GME costs for the 1984 cost re-
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