Cite as: 508 U. S. 402 (1993)
Souter, J., dissenting
plete data." Ante, at 410. Second, the Court finds that "inadequate or excessive" may well mean, as the Secretary suggests, inadequate or excessive as measured against "the reasonable costs as determined by the [Secretary] applying the methods [of determining costs]." Ante, at 411. I think the language of clause (ii) precludes these readings.
Clause (ii) identifies its subject, "aggregate reimbursement," as the figure "produced by the methods of determining costs." Thus, once we know what "the methods of determining costs" are, we should be able to discover the nature of the "aggregate reimbursement" that is "produced by" those methods. Section 1395x(v)(1)(A) makes it clear that "methods" refers to the regulations implementing the statutory mandate to pay providers of services "the cost actually incurred, excluding therefrom any part of incurred cost found to be unnecessary in the efficient delivery of needed health services." The first sentence of § 1395x(v) (1)(A), which together with § 1395hh authorizes the Secretary to issue such regulations, identifies them as "regulations establishing the . . . methods to be used . . . in determining . . . costs." And clause (i) of § 1395x(v)(1)(A) uses the exact same phrase as clause (ii): the regulations shall take into account both direct and indirect costs, it says, so that "under the methods of determining costs," patients who are not Medicare beneficiaries will not subsidize beneficiaries, nor will beneficiaries subsidize nonbeneficiaries. Thus, "the methods of determining costs" are not procedures for estimating costs to make interim payments; rather, they are the means for figuring the actual "reasonable cost of . . . services."
The Secretary appears not to dispute this, but contends, in the Court's words, that the phrase "produced by the methods of determining costs" actually means "derived from application of the methods to rough, incomplete data." Ante, at 410. In other words, as the Secretary asserted at oral argument, "what you're really doing is taking estimated data
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