2nd Alliance Defending Freedom Lawsuit Alleges Planned Parenthood Fraud

• By Alan Sears
• Posted Jul 24, 2012
• No Comments »

For decades, Planned Parenthood has been the leading purveyor of abortions for profit in America, making millions off the blood of children. But Planned Parenthood is not only guilty of fostering abortions – it’s guilty of committing fraud to expand its profits, stealing monies provided by taxpayers like you. On July 10, we were finally able to make public our latest major legal assault on this brutal and corrupt enterprise.

Charging Planned Parenthood with submitting “repeated false, fraudulent, and/or ineligible claims for reimbursements” to Medicaid and failing to meet acceptable standards of medical practice, Alliance Defending Freedom sued the organization’s Iowa affiliate in March, 2011, on behalf of former Planned Parenthood clinic director Sue Thayer.

The suit was filed under a federal law that allows “whistleblowers” with inside information to expose fraudulent billing by government contractors. By law, such cases may not be made public until a court unseals them. This is our second lawsuit against Planned Parenthood to be revealed – in March, a federal court unsealed a similar Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuit against one of the group’s Texas affiliates.

Thayer, former manager of Planned Parenthood’s Storm Lake and LeMars clinics, has sued under both the federal and Iowa False Claims acts, alleging that the organization knowingly committed Medicaid fraud from 2002 to 2009 by seeking reimbursements from Iowa Medicaid Enterprise and the Iowa Family Planning Network for products and services not legally reimbursable by those programs. The lawsuit also alleges that an affiliate now known as Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed nearly one-half million false claims with Medicaid, from which Planned Parenthood received and retained nearly $28 million.

If Thayer prevails, Planned Parenthood could be ordered to pay the United States and Iowa as much as $5.5 billion in False Claims Act damages and penalties.

The lawsuit alleges that, to enhance revenues, Planned Parenthood implemented a “C-Mail” program that automatically mailed a year’s supply of birth control pills to women who had only been seen once at a Planned Parenthood clinic and usually by personnel who were not qualified health care professionals. After that, Planned Parenthood mailed thousands of unrequested birth control pills to those clients. Planned Parenthood’s cost for a 28-day supply of birth control pills mailed to clients was $2.98, but the Medicaid reimbursement Planned Parenthood received for the pills was $26.32. In some cases, the Postal Service returned the birth control pills to Planned Parenthood. Instead of crediting Medicaid or destroying the returned pills, Planned Parenthood resold the same birth control pills and billed Medicaid twice for the same pills.

The suit also claims Planned Parenthood coerced low-income women into paying for services Medicaid was intended to cover in full.

“Americans deserve to know if their hard-earned tax money is being funneled to groups that are misusing it,” says Senior Counsel Michael J. Norton, a former U.S. Attorney. “People may hold different views about abortion, but everyone can agree that Planned Parenthood should play by the same rules as everyone else. It certainly isn’t entitled to any public funds, especially if it is defrauding Medicaid and the American taxpayer.”

Working on this case with Alliance Defending Freedom has been Des Moines attorney J. Russell Hixson, one of our nearly 2,200 Allied Attorneys. Please be in prayer for him and for all of our lawyers as they work to bring an end to Planned Parenthood’s decades-long assault on life in the womb. And thank you for doing so much to make all our legal efforts possible.