418
Opinion of the Court
agency's current view which, as we see it, so closely fits "the design of the statute as a whole and . . . its object and policy." Crandon v. United States, 494 U. S. 152, 158 (1990).
Section 1395 explicitly delegates to the Secretary the authority to develop regulatory methods for the estimation of reasonable costs. See 42 U. S. C. § 1395x(v)(1)(A).13 To be
sure, by virtue of their being generalizations, they necessarily will fail to yield exact numbers—to the detriment of health care providers at times, to their benefit at other times.14
Presumably, the methods could use a more exact mode of calculating depreciation, cf. Daughters of Miriam Center for the Aged v. Mathews, 590 F. 2d 1250 (CA3 1978), or to account for proximity to a college or university because it can distort the wage index, cf. Austin, Texas, Brackenridge Hospital v. Heckler, 753 F. 2d 1307, 1316 (CA5 1985), or to a high-crime zone in which heightened, and expensive, security is called for. All of these variables, and many others, affect actual costs; factoring them in the methods undoubtedly would improve their accuracy. But "[w]here, as here, the statute expressly entrusts the Secretary with the responsibility for
13 Such a delegation of authority is not atypical in the context of the Social Security Act. Indeed, we noted that "Congress has 'conferred on the Secretary exceptionally broad authority to prescribe standards for applying certain sections of the Act.' " Heckler v. Campbell, 461 U. S. 458, 466 (1983) (quoting Schweiker v. Gray Panthers, 453 U. S. 34, 43 (1981)).
14 There is no doubt that under petitioners' expansive reading of clause (ii) nothing would prevent the Secretary from demanding reimbursement where she could show that application of the methods resulted in overpayment. For instance, the modified wage index, whose generalized retroactive application we rejected in Georgetown, arguably could be imposed on a hospital-by-hospital basis. Such an outcome, by undermining providers' ability to predict costs, runs counter to one of Congress' apparent motivations in authorizing cost limits. See S. Rep. No. 92-1230, at 188 (because limits on costs recognized as reasonable would be set prospectively, "the provider would know in advance the limits to Government recognition of incurred costs and have the opportunity to act to avoid having costs that are not reimbursable").
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