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529US1

Unit: $U32

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Cite as: 529 U. S. 1 (2000)

13

Opinion of the Court

haustion).
Indeed, in this very case, the Seventh Circuit
held that several of respondent’s claims were not ripe and
remanded for ripeness review of the remainder. 143 F. 3d,
at 1077–1078. Doctrines of “ripeness” and “exhaustion” con-
tain exceptions, however, which exceptions permit early re-
view when, for example, the legal question is “ﬁt” for resolu-
tion and delay means hardship, see Abbott Laboratories,
supra, at 148–149, or when exhaustion would prove “futile,”
see McCarthy v. Madigan, 503 U. S. 140, 147–148 (1992);
McKart, supra, at 197–201.
(And sometimes Congress ex-
pressly authorizes preenforcement review, though not here.
See, e. g., 15 U. S. C. § 2618(a)(1)(A) (Toxic Substances Con-
trol Act).)

Insofar as § 405(h) prevents application of the “ripeness”
and “exhaustion” exceptions, i. e., insofar as it demands the
“channeling” of virtually all
legal attacks through the
agency, it assures the agency greater opportunity to apply,
interpret, or revise policies, regulations, or statutes with-
out possibly premature interference by different individual
courts applying “ripeness” and “exhaustion” exceptions case
by case. But this assurance comes at a price, namely, oc-
casional individual, delay-related hardship.
In the context
of a massive, complex health and safety program such as
Medicare, embodied in hundreds of pages of statutes and
thousands of pages of often interrelated regulations, any of
which may become the subject of a legal challenge in any
of several different courts, paying this price may seem justi-
In any event, such was the judgment of Congress as
ﬁed.
understood in Salﬁ and Ringer. See Ringer, supra, at 627;
Salﬁ, supra, at 762.

Despite the urging of the Council and supporting amici,
we cannot distinguish Salﬁ and Ringer from the case before
us. Those cases themselves foreclose distinctions based
upon the “potential future” versus the “actual present” na-
ture of the claim, the “general
legal” versus the “fact-
speciﬁc” nature of the challenge, the “collateral” versus