Planned Parenthood
A federal judge has refused to let Planned Parenthood – already under fire for its horrific baby body-parts trade – off the hook in a False Claims Act case brought by a former employee.
U.S. District Judge John Jarvey in Iowa on Wednesday found the abortion giant issued prescriptions without prior authorization by licensed practitioners and billed taxpayers for services connected to abortions in violation of the law.
He dismissed a third claim alleging Planned Parenthood solicited donations from patients but then billed taxpayers for their treatment anyway.
The case has been in the courts for years. WND reported in 2014 that the whistleblower claim that the Planned Parenthood branch had been scamming American taxpayers out of millions was reinstated by a federal appeals court.
The case originated in 2011 when Sue Thayer, former manager of Iowa’s Storm Lake and LeMars Planned Parenthood clinics, sued under both federal and Iowa False Claims Acts. She alleges Planned Parenthood knowingly committed Medicaid fraud from 2002 to 2009 by seeking improper and even illegal reimbursements from Iowa Medicaid Enterprise and the Iowa Family Planning Network.
A district judge in 2012 dismissed the complaint at Planned Parenthood’s request, but the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has returned it to district court.
“We conclude that Thayer has pled sufficiently particularized facts to support her allegations that Planned Parenthood violated the FCA by filing claims for (1) unnecessary quantities of birth control pills, (2) birth control pills dispensed without examinations or without or prior to a physician’s order, (3) abortion-related services, and (4) the full amount of services that had already been paid, in whole or in part, by ‘donations’ Planned Parenthood coerced from patients,” the appeals court ruling said.
“Thayer adequately alleges the particular details of these schemes, such as the names of the individuals that instructed her to carry out these schemes, the two-year time period in which these schemes took place, the clinics that participated in these schemes, and the methods by which these schemes were perpetrated. Moreover, she alleges that her position as center manager gave her access to Planned Parenthood’s centralized billing system, pleads specific details about Planned Parenthood’s billing systems and practices, and alleges that she had personal knowledge of Planned Parenthood’s submission of false claims.
“Thayer’s claims thus have sufficient indicia of reliability because she provided the underlying factual bases for her allegations,” the ruling said.
The case was returned to district court, where Jarvey now has indicated it can move forward on two of the major planks.
“Planned Parenthood views women as profit centers, not patients,” said Steven H. Aden, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom. “Taxpayers deserve to know that Planned Parenthood is acting illegally, not only by wrongfully submitting claims to Medicaid for reimbursement, but also by failing to protect the health of the women it purports to serve.
“Our tax dollars should fund the thousands of trusted, local public health clinics across America, not the barbaric acts of this billion-dollar corporation,” he said.
The laws under which the claim was filed allow whistleblowers with inside information to expose fraud.
Planned Parenthood fired Thayer over her opposition to its “webcam” abortions, which allowed abortion drugs to be prescribed to women without a personal meeting with a doctor.
The lawsuit claims Planned Parenthood’s “C-Mail” scam began by automatically sending a year’s supply of birth control pills to women who came into one of the organization’s clinics. The pills were usually sent without a physician’s order, often dispensed to women “at levels not medically reasonable or necessary … constituting ‘abuse or overuse’” and were even shipped without the patient’s consent or foreknowledge.
Planned Parenthood then billed Medicaid for $26.32 for each month’s worth of pills, the lawsuit claims, even though the cost to the clinics was only $2.98.
Thayer claims the scam proved to be so profitable that Planned Parenthood even held competitions among its clinics to see which of them could enroll the most women in the “C-Mail” program.
Furthermore, the lawsuit claims, the U.S. Postal Service sometimes returned the packages to Planned Parenthood, but instead of crediting Medicaid or destroying the returned pills, the clinics resold the birth control pills and billed Medicaid twice for the same medication.
A second claim within the lawsuit alleges that though both Iowa and federal laws bar taxpayer funds from reimbursing abortion services, Planned Parenthood found a way to sidestep the restriction.
The lawsuit claims that rather than billing Medicaid for abortions directly – a clear violation of the law – Planned Parenthood “fragmented” the patients’ bills so it could charge Medicaid for everything the clinic did around and related to the abortion. The charges included, “without limitation, office visits, ultrasounds, Rh factor tests, lab work, general counseling and abortion aftercare, all of which were, when provided, integral to and/or related to surgical and medical abortion procedures.”
It’s not the only such cloud on Planned Parenthood’s horizon.
WND reported earlier this month the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments asking for the reinstatement of another whistleblower case brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of Jonathan Bloedow.
Bloedow is a Washington state taxpayer who claims Planned Parenthood repeatedly submitted “false, fraudulent, and/or ineligible claims for reimbursement” to the state’s Department of Social and Health Services.
“The taxpayer dollars of Americans should be used responsibly and for the common good, not funneled to groups like Planned Parenthood that abuse the public’s trust,” said ADF Senior Counsel Steven H. Aden.
“Planned Parenthood’s bottom line doesn’t trump compliance with the law. We are asking the court to hold them accountable,” he said.
The Bloedow case also had been dismissed earlier on technical grounds when Planned Parenthood claimed there was another lawsuit against a Planned Parenthood affiliate in California, which barred Bloedow’s claims.
Aden told WND it was a separate whistleblower involved in a separate corporate entity, meaning the dismissal was improper. So ADF appealed the dismissal of Bloedow’s claims to the 9th Circuit.
The cases claim that Planned Parenthood was able to unjustly benefit by tens of millions of dollars.
Then just last year, WND reported the Houston-based Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast settled with the U.S. Justice Department over similar allegations.
The organization paid $4.3 million to resolve civil allegations under the False Claims Act, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
Undercover videos
Planned Parenthood’s part in the body parts trade was exposed through a series of undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress, which set up a fake organ purchasing company.
In the first undercover video released by CMP, Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on crushing babies.
“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact,” she said.
See the first video:
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jwplayer(‘jwplayer_GUCAtr3B_pszPfxYQ_div’).setup(
{“playlist”:”http://ift.tt/23qoNwX”}
);
In the second video, Planned Parenthood’s Mary Gatter said, “I want a Lamborghini.”
See her comments:
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jwplayer(‘jwplayer_zD5NeDjn_pszPfxYQ_div’).setup(
{“playlist”:”http://ift.tt/1qBMXXt”}
);
In the fifth, Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood’s Houston clinic discusses “intact fetal cadavers”:
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jwplayer(‘jwplayer_PcM0Npsy_pszPfxYQ_div’).setup(
{“playlist”:”http://ift.tt/23qoLFq”}
);
The seventh video has the testimony of a Planned Parenthood worker who tapped an aborted infant’s heart and saw it start beating.
if(typeof(jQuery)==”function”){(function($){$.fn.fitVids=function(){}})(jQuery)};
jwplayer(‘jwplayer_SwR9IYuW_pszPfxYQ_div’).setup(
{“playlist”:”http://ift.tt/1qBMVyX”}
);
And No. 8 has Cate Dyer, CEO of Stem Express, admitting Planned Parenthood sells fully intact aborted babies.
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jwplayer(‘jwplayer_wUzlcNZk_pszPfxYQ_div’).setup(
{“playlist”:”http://ift.tt/23qoLFs”}
);
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/06/23/judge-wont-let-planned-parenthood-off-fraud-hook/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/06/22/judge-wont-let-planned-parenthood-off-fraud-hook/
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