Supreme Court rules Medicare challenge was too late to gain repayment

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Supreme Court rules Medicare challenge was too late to gain repayment

January 23, 2013 08:28:46 am

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled unanimously [opinion, PDF] Tuesday in Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical Center [JURIST report] that 10-year-old final rulings for Medicare [official website; JURIST news archive] reimbursement cannot be appealed to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) [official website] beyond the deadlines previously set by the Secretary of HHS, despite evidence of intentional concealment that prevented the appeals. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the opinion for the court. The court held that the 180-day statutory deadline to appeal to the Provider Reimbursement Review Board (PRRB) from a final Medicare payment determination, under 42 USC § 1395oo(a)(3) [text] is not “jurisdictional,” and thus it was up to HHS, an agency, to set the statute of limitations. The court also held that the principle of equitable tolling [backgrounder] “does not similarly apply to administrative appeals of the kind here considered.” The holding reversed [opinion] the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred to suggest that the question of whether any agency decision is immune from equitable tolling has not been answered. “I write separately to note that the Court’s decision in this case does not establish that equitable tolling principles are irrelevant to internal administrative deadlines in all, or even most, contexts. The Court is correct that our equitable tolling cases have typically involved deadlines to bring suit in federal court. But we have never suggested that the presumption in favor of equitable tolling is generally inapplicable to administrative deadlines.”

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.

Former communist countries admitted for EU accession

On April 16, 2003, the 2003 Treaty of Accession was signed by 10 countries, admitting them for European Union (EU) ascension. After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked the first time that former members of the Soviet Bloc joined the EU.

Learn more about EU expansion from the organization's website.