National Government Services, Inc. v. United States

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Under the Medicare administrative contractor (MAC) program, 42 U.S.C. 1395kk1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) use contractors to administer Medicare claims and benefits. CMS must use competitive procedures when entering into contracts with MACs, taking into account performance quality, price, and other factors. In 2010, CMS prepared solicitations to replace the original MAC contracts and implemented a policy in the solicitations for several jurisdictions, placing a limit on the amount of MAC contract responsibility that any single entity could win in a prime contractor capacity. CMS would not award more than 26% of the national A/B Medicare workload to any single contractor or more than 40% of the national A/B Medicare workload to any one set of affiliates. An “Exception” stated that, for the sake of continuity of service, CMS retained the discretion to award a particular prime contract to a particular contractor, even where doing so would exceed the policy workload. Because of the policy, with NGS’s current contracts, NGS cannot win the MAC contract for Jurisdiction H. NGS filed a pre-award protest. The Government Accountability Office rejected the protest. The Claims Court affirmed. The Federal Circuit reversed. The policy precludes “full and open competition through the use of competitive procedures,” 41 U.S.C. 3301(a)(1). Congress outlined the circumstances under which an agency may avoid the full and open competition requirement. The court rejected the government’s argument that the workload caps fall within an exception for “procurement procedures otherwise expressly authorized by statute.” View "National Government Services, Inc. v. United States" on Justia Law