Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 93

529US1

Unit: $U32

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18

SHALALA v. ILLINOIS COUNCIL ON LONG
TERM CARE, INC.
Opinion of the Court

It would, moreover, have created a hardly justiﬁable dis-
tinction between “amount determinations” and many other
similar HHS determinations, see supra, at 14. And we do
not understand why Congress, as Justice Stevens be-
lieves, post, at 30–31 (dissenting opinion), would have wanted
to compel Medicare patients, but not Medicare providers, to
channel their claims through the agency. Cf. Brief for Re-
spondent 7–8, 18–21, 30–31 (apparently conceding the point).
This Court does not normally overturn, or so dramatically
limit, earlier authority sub silentio. And we agree with
those Circuits that have held the Court did not do so in this
instance. See Michigan Assn. of Homes and Servs., 127
F. 3d, at 500–501; American Academy of Dermatology, 118
F. 3d, at 1499–1501; St. Francis Medical Center, 32 F. 3d, at
812; Farkas, 24 F. 3d, at 855–861; Abbey, 978 F. 2d, at 41–44;
National Kidney Patients Assn., 958 F. 2d, at 1130–1134.

Justice Thomas maintains that Michigan Academy
“must have established,” by way of a new interpretation
of § 1395ii, the critical distinction between a dispute about
an agency determination in a particular case and a more
general dispute about, for example, the agency’s authority to
promulgate a set of regulations, i. e., the very distinction that
this Court’s earlier cases deny. Post, at 38 (dissenting opin-
ion). He says that, in this respect, we have mistaken Michi-
gan Academy’s “reasoning” (the presumption against pre-
clusion of judicial review) for its “holding.” Post, at 39–40.
And, he ﬁnds the holding consistent with earlier cases such
as Ringer because, he says, in Ringer everyone simply as-
sumed without argument that § 1395ii’s channeling provision
fully incorporated the whole of § 405(h). Post, at 40–42.

For one thing, the language to which Justice Thomas
points simply says that “Congres[s] inten[ded] to foreclose
review only of ‘amount determinations’ ” and not “matters
which Congress did not delegate to private carriers, such as
challenges to the validity of the Secretary’s instructions and
regulations,” Michigan Academy, supra, at 680 (emphasis