Cite as: 525 U. S. 449 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
termediary of its "exclusiv[e]" "[j]urisdiction for reopening a determination." Petitioner, on the other hand, contends that "jurisdiction" in § 405.1885(c) refers only to original jurisdiction over the reopening question, and not to appellate jurisdiction to review the intermediary's refusal. Even if it should win on this point, however, petitioner would only establish that the Board's otherwise extant appellate jurisdiction has not been excluded; it would still have to establish that the Board's appellate jurisdiction is somewhere conferred. Another regulation, § 405.1889, says that an inter-mediary's affirmative decision to reopen and revise a reimbursement determination "shall be considered a separate and distinct determination" to which the regulations authorizing appeal to the Board are applicable; but it says nothing about appeal of a refusal to reopen. Petitioner must thus establish the Board's appellate jurisdiction on the basis of the unelabo-rated text of the Medicare Act itself.
Petitioner relies upon 42 U. S. C. § 1395oo(a)(1)(A)(i), which says that a provider may obtain a hearing before the Board with respect to a cost report if the provider "is dissatisfied with a final determination of . . . its fiscal intermediary . . . as to the amount of total program reimbursement due the provider . . . for the period covered by such report . . . ." Petitioner maintains that the refusal to reopen a reimbursement determination constitutes a separate "final determination . . . as to the amount of total program reimbursement due the provider." The Secretary, on the other hand, maintains that this phrase does not include a refusal to reopen, which is not a "final determination . . . as to the amount," but rather the refusal to make a new determination. The Secretary's reading of § 1395oo(a)(1)(A)(i) frankly seems to us the more natural—but it is in any event well within the bounds of reasonable interpretation, and hence entitled to deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 842 (1984).
453
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