Planned Parenthood is on a mission — and their allies in the Democratic party are helping, drafting the most pro-abortion party platform ever, which includes removing the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment is a rider that has been added onto the appropriations bill every year since 1976, and it bans Medicaid funding of abortion. It’s also something that Americans strongly support. Yet Planned Parenthood, even though it is not a health care organization, continues to demand its removal anyway. Planned Parenthood has dropped any pretense of wanting taxpayer dollars for “health care” — they want to force taxpayers to fund abortion. Period.
Apparently, getting over $1 billion in taxpayer dollars in three years just isn’t enough money for the nation’s number one abortion provider.
Pro-life Democrats have been fighting their party’s efforts to repeal the Hyde Amendment, and the Republican party has adopted the most pro-life platform in history, which includes making the Hyde Amendment permanent. And these things are good… because Planned Parenthood cannot be trusted with Medicaid funding.
Planned Parenthood has been caught, over and over again, and in locations across the country, defrauding Medicaid. In Wisconsin, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services found that as many as two-thirds of Planned Parenthood Wisconsin’s Medicaid payments were fraudulent. The state investigated eight family planning facilities, five of which were Planned Parenthood clinics, and Planned Parenthood was by far the worst offender, with the highest percentage of over-billing.
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland was also found to be fraudulently billing Medicaid, to the tune of $28 million. In this case, the fraud included patient-specific abuses, “unbundling” of services, and fraudulent tallying of patients.
In Texas, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast was accused of fraud, and settled the case for $4.3 million after a whistleblower came forward revealing that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast had billed both the Texas Medicaid program and the Women’s Health Program “for items and services that were either medically unnecessary or were never actually provided.” The fraud was so rampant that the United States Department of Justice openly criticized the affiliate for “abuse of programs that are extremely important to the well-being of many American women.” They were accused of submitting more than $30 million in fraudulent bills over the course of six years.
It wasn’t just state investigations that found problems with abuse of funds, either. A U.S. House report found multiple abuses of taxpayer funds by Planned Parenthood, including giving money to their political action fund for lobbying purposes, spending millions of dollars on travel, and hundreds of thousands of dollars on themed fundraisers as well as lavish parties for their employees. Pro-life legal group Alliance Defending Freedom also examined 45 public audits of Planned Parenthood affiliates, along with 57 audits of state family planning programs, and found waste, fraud, and abuse amounting to over $129 million. In addition, the report found Medicaid fraud totalling $14.4 billion in 2013 alone.
Considering the rampant fraud and abuse Planned Parenthood regularly engages in, why on earth should we trust them with even more taxpayer funding?
