A Congressional agency will investigate the Planned Parenthood abortion business and look into its finances. A top pro-life attorney says it is much needed because Planned Parenthood has received billions in taxpayer funding at the same time its affiliates have engaged in fraud.
The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO), a Congressional agency, has indicated it will conduct an investigation of the Planned Parenthood abortion, business, which was recently busted for millions of dollars of Medicaid fraud in Texas.
The abortion giant has engaged in at least $12.5 million in fraud over multiple states — that has become public knowledge so far.
Steve Aden, a pro-life attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom talked with National Review about why the investigation by GAO is so important:
Over the past ten years, Planned Parenthood and its 71 separate affiliates have reportedly received more than $4 billion in taxpayer funding. During that same period of time, approximately 20 percent of Planned Parenthood’s affiliates have been implicated in waste, abuse, and potential fraud. Much of this waste, abuse, and potential fraud has been identified in publicly available audits to which little attention has been paid until Alliance Defending Freedom’s first report to the Congress in October 2011. Additional potential fraud has been identified in several whistleblower federal False Claims Act lawsuits around the country. One such federal False Claims Act lawsuit recently led to an agreement by Planned Parenthood to pay $4.3 million or more to settle claims for what the U.S. Department of Justice called Medicaid fraud.
In view of the massive amounts of overbilling documented in these publicly available audits, it is particularly troubling that Planned Parenthood received in 2012 $542 million in taxpayer funds. In that same year, Planned Parenthood spent millions of dollars to elect politicians who support, defend, and shield Planned Parenthood from any serious audit or investigation.
For over two years, Alliance Defending Freedom has been calling on Congress and state attorneys general around the country to exercise proper oversight of Planned Parenthood’s use of taxpayer dollars. Beginning in September 2011, Alliance Defending Freedom provided support and information to the chair and staff of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which had launched a still-ongoing investigation of Planned Parenthood and its use of federal taxpayer dollars, including its compliance with federal restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion. In February 2013, Representative Diane Black (R., Tenn.), joined by more than 70 members of Congress, asked the GAO to initiate an investigation. Again, Alliance Defending Freedom provided support and information to these members of Congress to aid their efforts.
If authorities at both the federal level and state levels do not investigate and audit Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, these officials will be complicit in waste, abuse, and potential fraud by Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, involving massive amounts of American taxpayer dollars. American taxpayers deserve to know that their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent wisely and efficiently. As that is obviously not the case with Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, GAO’s investigation and audit are clearly long overdue.
