The Epoch Times The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) illegally reduced prescription drug reimbursements to hospitals by $1.6 billion per year in a program aimed at helping poor patients.
The decision, a win for hospitals serving low-income individuals, allows those hospitals to seek the improperly withheld funding from the federal government. The reduction in reimbursements was ordered by the Trump administration in 2018 and defended in court by the Biden administration. The government argued the rate cuts would more accurately mirror the cost to hospitals of buying the drugs and that it was allowed to do so under a legal provision that gave regulators authority to order adjustments to rates.
But HHS improperly relied on a formula that Congress made available only in specific circumstances, which didnât apply in the case, the court determined. President George W. Bush in 2003 signed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act into law. The statute requires HHS to establish reimbursement rates every year for certain outpatient prescription drugs provided by hospitals using a predetermined formula…
