Planned Parenthood: We Got $528.4 Million in Taxpayer Funds in One Year
By Melanie Hunter | July 21, 2015 | 12:19 PM EDT
(Courtesy of Planned Parenthood's 2013-2014 annual report) (CNSNews.com) – Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, received $528.4 million in taxpayer funding, according to its 2013-2014 annual report, which runs from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014.
The report shows that Planned Parenthood received $528.4 million in “government health services grants and reimbursements” during a one-year period, the latest figures available.
That means it received an average of $1,447,671 in taxpayer funds per day and an average of $60,320 every hour.
Several members of Congress, as well as some GOP presidential candidates, are calling for Planned Parenthood to be defunded after a video surfaced showing Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services, discussing the sale of baby parts with two actors posing as a fetal tissue procurement company.
The video was secretly made by the Center for Medical Progress, a non-profit “group of citizen journalists dedicated to monitoring and reporting on medical ethics and advances.”
Three Republican-led congressional committees plan to hold hearings investigating the matter, and House Speaker John Boehner has also called on President Barack Obama to condemn and end the practice of selling baby body parts.
4 Ways Planned Parenthood Has Billed Taxpayers For Elective Abortions We have no evidence that taxpayer dollars aren’t keeping the lights on and running the water in the abortion room. Casey Mattox By Casey Mattox OCTOBER 14, 2015 Share on emailEmail Share on printPrint Follow Us on Twitter Like Us on Facebook Hangout with us
In her testimony before Congress, Planned Parenthood CEP Cecile Richards repeatedly insisted that federal law already prohibits Planned Parenthood from using tax dollars for abortions. The Hyde Amendment does prohibit Planned Parenthood from billing federal taxpayers for any abortion except those for rape or incest, or that are necessary to save the mother’s life. These exceptions are so exceedingly rare that states will report only a handful of those Medicaid-paid abortions annually—if any at all.
But it is also undeniably true that taxpayer dollars have been and are paid to Planned Parenthood for abortions and to subsidize abortions. Since money is fungible, when Planned Parenthood is receiving over a half billion dollars annually—well over $127 million of that “excess revenue”—taxpayers are effectively freeing up other funds to pay for Planned Parenthood’s abortion business. Other than Planned Parenthood pledges, we have no evidence that taxpayer dollars aren’t keeping the lights on and running the water in the abortion room.
One important admission from Richards’ testimony is that a shocking 86 percent of Planned Parenthood’s non-government revenue stream is from abortion. That abortion revenue appears to make up a sizable part of the $765 million profit Planned Parenthood has made over the last decade. More troubling still, in several instances Planned Parenthood directly billed and bills taxpayers for elective abortions.
1. State Medicaid Abortion Funding Mandates The Hyde Amendment does not prevent states from making taxpayers pay for elective abortions, and many states are effectively doing this through their Medicaid programs. Thus, in 17 states taxpayers are compelled to pay for most abortions. In California alone, it appears taxpayers are paying for roughly 80,000 abortions per year—in the state where StemExpress has been buying infant body parts from Planned Parenthood clinics.
Richards intentionally and carefully worded her answer to say that federal taxpayer dollars cannot be used for abortion. She failed to acknowledge that an unknown but sizable part of the $528 million Planned Parenthood received from federal and state taxpayers last year was to reimburse it for abortions.
In fact, the largest state, California, has taken it several steps further and forced not just taxpayers but the insurance plans of churches (paid from tithe money) to pay for elective abortions. While this abortion mandate blatantly violates federal law, the Obama administration has refused to intervene.
2. Billing Federal Taxpayers for Abortions in New York The Alliance Defending Freedom has compiled the known federal and state audits of Planned Parenthood and state family planning programs, revealing millions of dollars in waste, abuse, and potential fraud by Planned Parenthood, including a $4.3 million settlement after the Obama administration’s Department of Justice contended that Planned Parenthood had overbilled Texas’s Medicaid program. Some of these audits have demonstrated that Planned Parenthood has billed federal Medicaid for abortions.
Audits have demonstrated that Planned Parenthood has billed federal Medicaid for abortions. New York requires its taxpayers to pay for elective abortions through Medicaid, but these abortions are still not supposed to be paid by federal taxpayer dollars because of the Hyde Amendment. But audits have revealed that New York, and apparently Planned Parenthood specifically, was billing federal taxpayers for elective abortions.
In 2008, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General examined billings by family planning programs in New York. During one four-year audit period, HHS found that hundreds of thousands of abortion-related claims were billed unlawfully to Medicaid by improperly labeling them “family planning” and thus receiving the higher federal share of the reimbursement.
One 2008 federal audit looked at just a small sample of 119 Medicaid claims and found that 27 of them were abortion procedures. It also found that one unnamed provider was responsible for 25 of these, representing four different services performed in conjunction with abortions. The auditors believed that this provider billed for at least 3,900 abortions during the audit period, improperly labeling them as “family planning,” and thus federal taxpayers paid them at a 90 percent rate. While these federal audits of state family planning programs typically do not identify the providers actually submitting the false claims, the HHS inspector general did identify “especially Planned Parenthoods” specifically as simply billing almost everything as “family planning.”
3. Washington State Bills Taxpayers for Chemical Abortions A Washington state audit of Planned Parenthood in 2007-2008 found that it had billed taxpayers for a drug used in abortion. Because the audit looked at only a small sample of Planned Parenthood’s billings, this may not have been an isolated event.
4. Billing Taxpayers for Everything But the Actual Baby Cutting Sue Thayer worked for 17 years for Planned Parenthood in Iowa, directing two clinics. After her employment at Planned Parenthood ended in 2009 over its implementation of webcam abortions, she became a whistleblower, alleging over $26 million in fraud against U.S. and Iowa taxpayers by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reinstated Thayer’s case last year, saying, “we conclude that Thayer has pled sufficiently particularized facts to support her allegations that Planned Parenthood violated the FCA by filing claims for … abortion related services.”
Hospitals would unwittingly bill Medicaid for services directly related to elective abortions. Thayer had access to computerized billing records for the Planned Parenthood affiliate. Among Thayer’s claims is that Planned Parenthood: “billed taxpayers for services and supplies rendered as part of the provision of abortions, including, 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/Telemed abortion procedures and thus not properly reimbursable pursuant to the Title XIX-Medicaid Program.”
While no longer part of the case, Thayer also alleged that Planned Parenthood instructed women completing a chemical abortion at home “to report to the local hospital emergency room in case of hemorrhage or other serious side effect and to advise local hospital emergency room personnel that the client had suffered a ‘miscarriage’ and to seek Title XIX-Medicaid coverage.”
The result was that those hospitals would unwittingly bill Medicaid for services directly related to elective abortions, while Planned Parenthood would absolve itself of responsibility for the negative effects of its at-home chemical abortion protocol.
Contra the mantra of Planned Parenthood defenders, taxpayers are being required to pay for Planned Parenthood’s abortions. Our money is paying for what we’re seeing on those videos. Planned Parenthood’s abortion business is our business.
How Much Montana Taxpayer Money Goes to Planned Parenthood? By: Ron Catlett | August 31, 2015
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In the wake of the release of a number of disturbing videos showing Planned Parenthood affiliated workers in other states discussing the price of body parts of aborted unborn children, there is renewed controversy over the amount of taxpayer money that the organization receives.
According to expenditure data from Montana’s online checkbook, the State of Montana made payments to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates totaling just about $2.03 million in fiscal year 2015.
Federal law prohibits taxpayer money from directly funding abortions. However, there is no prohibition on recipients using the money to pay for the overhead costs associated with maintaining an abortion clinic.
The vast majority of Montana expenditures to Planned Parenthood were made by the Dept. of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS), which accounted for more than 98 percent of payments to Planned Parenthood. Payments from DPHHS were largely listed under two categories: “federal sources-contracted services” and “social assistance.”
According to information provided to Media Trackers by DPHHS, “federal sources-contracted services” accounted for $972,705.15 in payments to Planned Parenthood affiliates. The majority of that amount — $760,455 — comes from federal grants. The other $212,250 comes from the state general fund for “clinical services.”
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The Title X and MCH (Maternal and Child Health) Block Grant — also known as Title V — funding have been the primary target of pro-life lawmakers who are seeking to cut off taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood. Title X is a program that provides funds for family planning services such as birth control and contraception. Title V funding goes for matching funds to pay for maternal and child health programs.
In Montana, Title X funding has proven to be a contentious issue in recent legislative sessions as heavily Republican (and more pro-life) legislative bodies have had to work with a pro-choice Democratic governor to allocate those funds in the budget. In the 2015 session, lawmakers passed HB 606 — sponsored by State Rep. Christy Clark (R-Choteau — which removes direct legislative control of Title X funds by placing them into a special revenue account that is directly overseen by DPHHS.
The “social assistance” category accounts for about $1.05 million in payments, and is simply payment to Planned Parenthood for services rendered to patients. A large chuck of this amount are payments made on behalf of patients who are on Medicaid. Because Medicaid pays providers directly for services and most private clinics and hospitals accept Medicaid, some do not consider this “direct taxpayer funding.”
The controversial videos, which were published by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress in an undercover “sting” operation, purport to show Planned Parenthood workers haggling over the price of fetal body parts with prospective buyers, and statements that abortion procedures are changed to preserve certain body parts if there is an interested buyer. They also include testimony and a video showing that some babies are still technically alive after the abortion, but are still dismembered.
For its part Planned Parenthood continues to argue that the controversial videos are “heavily and selectively” edited and that they’ve done nothing wrong. They also claim that abortions account for just 3 percent of their overall services — a claim that has been disputed by opponents — and that cutting off taxpayers funds to the organization will end up restricting critical access to healthcare for patients who use the clinics.
There is an ongoing effort by pro-life lawmakers — in the wake of the video revelations — in Congress to cut Title X funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates and re-route the money to Community Health Centers, which far outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics and provide many of the same services, but do not provide abortions.
According to its website, Planned Parenthood of Montana maintains clinics in 4 Montanan cities: Missoula, Helena, Great Falls, and Billings. There are 16 Community Health Centers across the state
State lawmakers in Kansas and Texas successfully cut off Title X funding to Planned Parenthood by establishing a tiered system of eligibility whereby county health centers and public clinics get first priority and Planned Parenthood and abortion-providing organization getting last priority. While they are not specifically banned from receiving funds, the Title X grants were completely allocated to upper higher priority clinics.
Other states, such as Wisconsin are now considering similar legislation.
So far, Indiana and Arizona have moved to either eliminate or drastically cut Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood. The organization successfully challenged Indiana’s attempts to withhold Medicaid funding in court. Louisiana Governor and Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal recently signed an executive order cutting off Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood affiliates, effective Sept. 2. Alabama’s Republican Gov. Robert Bentley followed suit. Planned Parenthood is challenging those orders order in federal court.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson also moved to terminate his state’s Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood earlier this month.
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