Report suggests Planned Parenthood may defraud taxpayers

Washington D.C., Aug 12, 2014 / 01:06 am

A report investigating audits of Planned Parenthood claims to show that the national abortion provider's practices may have led to the loss of more than $100 million of taxpayer money.

Publicly-available audits and testimonies from former employees "strongly suggest that Planned Parenthood affiliates systematically take advantage of 'overbilling' opportunities to maximize revenues," Alliance Defending Freedom said in their 2014 report "Profit, No Matter What."

The report, which is Alliance Defending Freedom's third annual report on the abortion-performing corporation, examined 44 external audits of Planned Parenthood as well as 51 federal audits of state family planning programs.

Together, these audits suggested that Planned Parenthood practices "resulted in losses to the American taxpayer of more than $115 million" from healthcare funding programs.

Planned Parenthood affiliates nationwide, the report charges, have engaged in "waste, abuse, and potential fraud" by billing federal healthcare programs separately for drugs and procedures provided as part of an abortion procedure, providing prescription drugs without a physician's approval, and billing the government programs for drugs that were not actually provided or patients that have not been seen at the clinic, among other dishonest billing practices.

"Nearly every known audit of Planned Parenthood affiliates has found overbilling," the report said.

The audits found that Planned Parenthood received $8 million overpayments from Title XIX- Medicaid programs, and have "have specifically identified Planned Parenthood affiliates as the source of at least $12.6 million in waste, abuse, and potentially fraudulent overbilling of taxpayers." In addition, state audits found that the organization overcharged at least $107 million for state family planning programs.

These federal and state programs, the report said, "are understaffed and rely on the integrity of the provider for program compliance."

The "weight of evidence," the report continued, "indicates that the waste by Planned Parenthood may be widespread."

The findings, Alliance Defending Freedom stated, "suggest that such policies may be the result of, at a minimum, a policy of benign neglect over billing practices organization-wide by Planned Parenthood Federation of America's headquarters in New York City."

Annually, Planned Parenthood receives millions of dollars from the federal government, acquiring more than $500 million – nearly half of its operating budget – in 2013 from government programs.

Between 2004 and 2013, Planned Parenthood received a total of more than $4 billion from the government in taxpayer money.

In recent years, this heavy funding of the abortion giant has led to federal efforts to reconsider the organization's federal funding. In January 2013, the "Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act" was introduced in Congress, which would allot tax funds for women's health care to providers who do not perform abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

And in August 2013, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood's use of taxpayer funds at the request of Congressional lawmakers.

In their study, Alliance Defending Freedom also pointed to previous reports which also investigated potential fraud, malpractice, and other violations of federal regulations.

"Planned Parenthood affiliates have also been fined or settled in cases involving wrongful death/medical malpractice, failure to report child sexual abuse and rape, and regulatory violations," the report stated.