422
Souter, J., dissenting
but running them through the same methods that you're eventually going to run the final data through in order to get a result." Tr. of Oral Arg. 31-32. There is, however, an obvious difficulty with this proposed interpretation: the complete lack of any reference to "incomplete" or "estimated" data in clause (ii). Two less obvious difficulties are even more telling.
First, nothing in Title XVIII of the Social Security Act specifies that interim payments should be calculated by applying to estimated data the complete, detailed methodology for reaching a final reasonable cost figure; the Secretary's own regulations, indeed, suggest just the opposite. "The interim payment," states the relevant regulation, "may be related to the last year's average per diem, or to charges, or to any other ready basis of approximating costs." 42 CFR § 413.60(a) (1992). And for purposes of devising preliminary estimates, this makes perfect sense; working through a permissible method for determining costs in all its detail may not improve the quality of an estimate if the raw figures used are mostly guesswork. But this divergence of methods for calculating interim payments and methods for determining reasonable cost casts doubt on the Secretary's proffered interpretation of "produced by the methods of determining costs." If interim, estimated payments may in fact be calculated without strict adherence to the methods of determining costs, it is hard to see why Congress would choose to identify a series of interim payments as "the aggregate reimbursement produced by the methods of determining costs."
Second, the Secretary's interpretation assumes that "the methods of determining costs" are no more than a series of equations, which can be applied as readily to final, audited cost figures as to mere projections. But the statute suggests that the term "methods" is not to be understood so narrowly. In the words of the statute, for example, the regulations establishing the methods may not only "provide for
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