Tag Archives: fraud

Planned Parenthood Sued for Medicaid Fraud

Planned Parenthood submitted “repeated false, fraudulent, and/or ineligible claims for reimbursements” to Medicaid and failed to meet acceptable standards of medical practice according to a federal lawsuit made public Monday. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing former Planned Parenthood clinic director Sue Thayer filed the lawsuit against the abortion giant’s Iowa affiliate in March 2011.

“Americans deserve to know if their hard-earned tax money is being funneled to groups that are misusing it,” said Senior Counsel Michael J. Norton, a former United States 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.”

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed the suit 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. In March, a federal court unsealed a similar Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuit against a Texas Planned Parenthood affiliate.

Thayer, former manager of Planned Parenthood’s Storm Lake and LeMars clinics, has sued under both the federal and Iowa False Claims acts. The suit alleges that Planned Parenthood knowingly committed Medicaid fraud from 2002 to 2009 by improperly seeking reimbursements from Iowa Medicaid Enterprise and the Iowa Family Planning Network for products and services not legally reimbursable by those programs.

The lawsuit alleges that Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa, 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 explains 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 that Planned Parenthood coerced “voluntary donations” for services and then billed Medicaid for them. In effect, the lawsuit explains, Planned Parenthood both falsely billed Medicaid and took money from low-income women by getting them to pay for services Medicaid was intended to cover in full.

The lawsuit Thayer v. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. Des Moines attorney J. Russell Hixson, one of nearly 2,200 allied attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom, is assisting with the case.

Auditor of State Dave Yost Takes on Food Stamp Fraud

Auditor of State Dave Yost this week identified substantial risks of fraud in Ohio’s food stamp program.

“This money is supposed to be going to feed hungry kids, and those kids need the govern- ment to try harder to get the job done,” Auditor Yost said Tuesday, speaking at the Second Harvest Food Bank in Columbus.

Responding to reports of misdirected food stamp aid, the Auditor of State’s office conducted a review of the program and, in a January 10 letter to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS), issued recommendations for increased oversight.

Auditor Yost said one high-risk indicator of fraud is frequent reissuance of lost, stolen or damaged cards. In some cases, these missing cards have been sold to corrupt vendors for pennies on the dollar, with the vendors cashing in on the cards without ever moving goods off the shelf. Nearly 340,000 food stamp EBT cards were reissued in 2011, and 17,000 recipients during a five year period received 10 or more cards.

Auditor Yost recommended that ODJFS increase supervision of reissuance practices and work with the Ohio General Assembly and federal sponsors to increase penalties for merchants and other vendors who improperly benefit from cards intended for program beneficiaries.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as the food stamp program, served more than 1.7 million people in Ohio in 2011.

The Fluoride Racket

It amazes me the audacity many elected officials have when it comes to deciding public health issues. The “one size fits all” policy seems rampant these days. I’m not sure if they are aware of the potential short and long term effects due to dumping a poison in the water supply, or if they are just ignorant. Let me explain just some of the reasons why you should not allow fluoride-a poison in the city water. Fluoride or hydrofluorosilicic acid, is an industrial “waste” product from the fertilizer industry. This bright idea came to be about the same time as did the bright ideas of asbestos lined pipes, lead in our gasoline and DDT, and was assumed safe and effective by public officials. I’m too young to remember, but some of you may remember seeing the “fogger” vehicles spraying neighborhoods and schools with what turned out to be a very, very bad idea. Today though, fluoride is the devil in disguise that is being propagandized as to the supposed health benefits of preventing tooth decay. Like any good propaganda, millions are spent on advertising to convince the trusting public to believe everything our leaders tell us. Sadly, many including the ADA and many of our dentist go along with this deception.

Fluoridation is unsafe because in accumulates in our bones and makes them brittle and more prone to fractures especially in the elderly. It accumulates in our pineal gland in our brain and possibly lowers the production of melatonin a very important regulatory hormone. It damages the enamel on our teeth especially in younger children. There are serious yet unproven concerns about the connection of osterosarcoma (cancerous-malignant bone tumors) in young men along with the possible connections to arthritis and hypothyroidism. Animal studies showed that 1ppm in drinking water showed an increase in aluminum in the brain. Places where there are 3ppm in public drinking water have proven lower fertility rates. In human studies, the agents in fluoride has been linked to increased lead in children’s blood and associated with increased violent behavior. Lastly, the safety and therapeutic benefit of reducing dental decay is so low that the concerns stated above and those not stated should be enough reasons to not be forced upon those of us who do not want to be “medicated” from our drinking water. I highly encourage everyone concerned to Google “weston price fluoride fraud” and determine yourself. As for me, I even avoid toothpaste with fluoride-but then again shouldn’t that be “my” decision.

Federal Stimulus Money Saving Jobs in Non-Existent Ohio Districts

A recent report from the Ohio WatchDog organization states:

Over $5 billion of stimulus money has seen its way into the State of Ohio thanks to the federal stimulus. The main goal of the money is to create or retain jobs and stimulate the economy in Ohio. According to www.recovery.gov more than 17,00 jobs have been created or retained, 11 of which are in Congressional Districts that do not exist: 21st, 99th, 69th, 87th, 85th, 49th, 20th, 54th, 56th, and 00. These 11 jobs have cost more than $5.3 million; more than 80% of the jobs created or retained so far are located in the Central Ohio area.

The five million dollar question is who is pocketing all of the money? Could it be Obama and company? Cooperating Ohio politicians on Capitol Hill? Or maybe it is Gov. Strickland and company? After all, he is a member of good standing in the liberal club of Capitol Hill Democrats. And, they are the co-architects of the economic crisis and its salvation via tax increasing bailouts and corporation bailouts.

I think it would be a good idea to audit the Ohio Treasury for some unexpected budget balancing stimulus.

Source: OhioWatchDog.org November 17, 2009

Ohio Democrats Seeks Ohio Supreme Court’s Help to Violate Voter Law

Democrats in public office have a problem with abiding by our laws. When they cannot get laws passed (that is if they even try to get laws passed) by consent of the governed by means of their representatives, they seek the court’s assistance in making them by judicial fiat. This is what Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is doing ion behalf of Gov. Strickland and the Democratic Party.

The Plain Dealer reported that Brunner is attempting to make it possible for citizens to vote and the same time of their registration. Ohio law requires a 30-day period must pass before new registrants may vote. The reason is to give county and state officials time to verify registrant information like their driver’s license or identification card. She and her Democrat backers are seeking to discard the law through the courts.

“On Tuesday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sided with the Ohio Republican Party and ordered Brunner to set up a system that provides names of newly registered voters whose driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms don’t match records in other government databases.”

Why did the Court of Appeals agree with the Republicans? The Court found the current means of screening eligible voter insufficient to prevent voter fraud.

Ohio’s Democrat officials do not have a problem with the likelihood of voter fraud. They are more concerned about 200,000 registrants whose driver’s license and social security records do not match government’s records. I have had my social security information not match the government’s records. It took a few days to get the problem resolved. But, Democrats wants all of us to feel tolerant towards those people and let them vote anyway. We should not disenfranchise those who might vote for Obama. Who cares about the possibility that they maybe among those enlisted by ACORN to get out and vote.

Democrats do not care about voter disenfranchisement. If that were the case, they would have attempted to pass legislation that changed voter law. Instead, Democrats seek to employ their famous Roe v Wade tactic–making law by law breaking judges. Obama agrees with those judges that saw the right of women to kill their babies in public places like clinics and hospitals as a fundamental privacy right guaranteed by Constitutional law. The problem is the privacy rights stated in the Constitution has nothing to do with sex or killing the unborn. The same principle applies here. The laws exist to prevent fraud and injustice. The laws were not meant to be violated by public officials, political vote seekers, or anyone else. They exist because some people have in the past and will likely do so in the future, especially if they believe they can get away with it. Ohio Democrats continue their practice of creating tolerance and unconstitutional rights for breaking laws in order to achieve their goals. In this case, their effort is to give Obama a better chance of winning the election.

I can hear some Democrats saying something like this: Well, so do Republicans. Do you remember Blackwell? Yes. I also remember Republicans creating redistricting law that gave their candidates a more favorable chance at winning elections in some districts. They did not blatantly seek to break the law by using the courts. They simply remade legitimate law. They actually did something Democrats often do not: They honored the rule of law, and representative of Ohioans not courts makes our laws.

Source: The Plain Dealer October 16, 2008