LIFE DIGEST: Planned Parenthood fined for overbilling
- Aug 11, 2009 -
The state of Washington has ordered a Planned Parenthood affiliate in Spokane to reimburse about $700,000 for overbilling Medicaid.
The news is the latest in a series of events that have revealed unscrupulous and/or illegal practices in clinics of the country’s No. 1 abortion provider.
Also in this edition: Hungarian stem cell ring busted.
The report — released Aug. 9 by the pro-life weblog Abortion in Washington (AIW) and based on an audit by the state’s Department of Social and Health Services – showed Planned Parenthood of Inland Washington billed Medicaid for oral contraceptives without prescriptions or with invalid ones; overbilled for condoms; billed Medicaid for post-abortion antibiotics under family planning, which is banned; billed office visits to receive a prescription or an injection as a consultation with a physician, which costs more, and billed for pregnancy tests on women when they were unnecessary.
Planned Parenthood was told to pay back $630,000 plus interest, according to AIW.
The audit of Planned Parenthood, which occurred from 2004 to 2007, was reported by the Spokane Spokesman-Review in May.
Planned Parenthood affiliates performed more than 305,000 abortions in 2007, the most recent year for which statistics are available. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the national organization, received more than $349 million in government grants and contracts during the financial year of July 2007 to June 2008. The organization’s total revenue was $1.04 billion during that time period.
Planned Parenthood has been the target of an undercover investigation during the last year that has shown staff members circumventing the law. Employees at seven PPFA affiliates in five states – Alabama, Arizona, California, Indiana and Tennessee — have been caught on video seeking to cover up alleged child sexual abuse. Lila Rose, a UCLA student, has led the hidden-camera operation by posing as a minor with an adult boyfriend by whom she is pregnant.
In a different undercover investigation by Live Action, the organization Rose leads, Planned Parenthood workers in seven states were caught on audio tape agreeing to receive donations designated for abortions of African-American babies.
Hungarian stem cell ring busted
Hungarian police have arrested four people for their alleged involvement in an illegal stem cell clinic.
The untested treatments utilized stem cells from human embryos and aborted babies, according to Reuters News Service.
An American, two Hungarians and a Ukrainian were arrested, with three of them detained while attempting to provide a treatment to a patient in a Budapest clinic, Reuters reported July 29.
“There is well-founded suspicion that a U.S. citizen called Julliy B. has carried out stem cell treatments for money within the framework of a Hungarian stem cell research laboratory and a Hungarian-owned private clinic since 2007,” Hungarian police said, according to Reuters.
Patients were normally charged $25,000 for a treatment, the police reported.
Stem cells are the body’s master cells that can develop into other cells and tissues, providing hope for producing cures for a variety of diseases. Extracting stem cells from embryos for research results in the destruction of the tiny human beings. Embryonic stem cells have yet to produce treatments for human beings and have been plagued by the development of tumors in lab animals.
Procuring adult stem cells does not harm donors, and such cells have produced therapies for at least 73 ailments in human beings, according to Do No Harm, a coalition promoting ethics in research.
Induced pluripotent stem cells, which are adult cells reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state, have produced promising results in lab animals. Their extraction does not harm donors.
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Further Learning
Learn more about: Life, Abortion, Stem-Cell Research, Science, Bioethics