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Rh Circuit had recently described it as “well established that a court, in determining whether notice and comment procedures apply to an agency action, will consider the agency’s own characterization of the particular action.” Telecommunications Research and Action Ctr. v. FCC, 800 F. 2d 1181, 1186 (1986); see also United Technologies Corp. v. EPA, 821 F. 2d 714, 718 (CADC 1987) (“[T]he agency’s characterization of a rule is ‘relevant’ ”). And in practice, courts appeared to give the agency’s characterization at least some weight. See Telecommunications, 800 F. 2d, at 1186 (finding “no reason to question the Commission’s characterization” of the challenged action as a “policy statement”); General Motors Corp. v. Ruckelshaus, 742 F. 2d 1561, 1565 (CADC 1984) (en banc) (finding a rule exempt from notice and comment in part because “the agency regarded its rule as interpretative”). These cases thus reinforce the likelihood that Congress inserted the words “statement of policy” to make clear that the agency could not evade the notice-and-comment obligation simply by calling a substantive rule a “statement of policy.” In deciding whether a particular agency action is (or is not) a substantive rule, it is the substantive legal effect that will matter, not the label.

In short, the statute’s history provides considerable evidence that Congress intended to replicate the APA framework. Nowhere in this history is there any indication that Congress intended to require notice and comment for a broader category than substantive rules.

The third—and perhaps strongest—reason for believing that Congress intended this interpretation is a practical reason. Medicare is a massive federal program, “embodied in hundreds of pages of statutes and thousands of pages of often interrelated regulations.” Shalala v. Illinois Council on Long Term Care, Inc., 529 U. S. 1, 13 (2000). To help