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Sue Thayer, who worked for Planned Parenthood for 17 years, claims that Planned Parenthood wrongly billed Iowa taxpayers for $28 million in abortion-related services and forms of overbilling.

June 22, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A whistleblower's lawsuit, accusing Planned Parenthood of millions of dollars in Medicaid fraud, will move forward, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

Sue Thayer, who worked for Planned Parenthood for 17 years, claims that Planned Parenthood wrongly billed Iowa taxpayers for $28 million in abortion-related services and forms of overbilling.

Thayer served as the director of Planned Parenthood's now-closed facility in Storm Lake from early 2006 to the end of 2008. When she started, she said, the facility did not offer abortion, and she believed the notion that contraception reduces unintended pregnancies.

She said she opposed the introduction of telemed abortion, which led to her firing.

Thayer said that while she was on staff, Planned Parenthood peppered Medicaid with “repeated false, fraudulent, and/or ineligible claims for reimbursements” by the state's taxpayers, according to her legal complaint, aided by the Alliance Deending Freedom.

Many of these illegally asked taxpayers to fund abortion by unbundling services, she said.

Planned Parenthood illegally billed Medicaid for “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” abortion-on-demand, which is not covered by the state's Medicaid program. Planned Parenthood did not disclose to authorities that these were part of the abortion procedure, said Thayer.

She said Planned Parenthood also overbilled Medicaid for contraceptive distribution that was covered by fraudulently charging consumers for birth control prescribed without a mandatory medical examination, at a higher rate than legally allowed, in excessive amounts, and sometimes without delivering the contraceptives themselves.

Thayer said that the organization generated a surplus of “at least $113.70 per client” by billing for a monthly dose of birth control long before the prior month's dose had been depleted.

The federal judge hearing the case dismissed one complaint in the case, Thayer v. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, although he seemed to believe the action had taken place.

Thayer had said that Planned Parenthood demanded that women pay for its services, then billed Medicaid to reimburse the full amount of the same services.

Chief Judge John Jarvey of the U.S. District of Southern Iowa ruled that, while Thayer may be able to prove this happened, it did not violate the law. “A factual allegation of wrongdoing, unsupported by citation to any legal authority, is insufficient to state a claim,” Judge Jarvey, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007, wrote in his ruling on Tuesday.

The lawsuit is one of many allegations that the nation's leading abortion provider generated its billion-dollar budget in part through lies, fraud, and corruption.

“Planned Parenthood views women as profit centers, not patients,” said Stephen Aden, a senior counsel at ADF. “Taxpayers deserve to know that Planned Parenthood is acting illegally, not only by wrongfully submitting claims to Medicaid for reimbursement, but also by failing to protect the health of the women it purports to serve. Our tax dollars should fund the thousands of trusted, local public health clinics across America, not the barbaric acts of this billion-dollar corporation.”

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast settled Medicaid fraud allegations brought by the state of Texas by agreeing to reimburse state and federal governments $4.3 million.

“As the former director of two Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa, I know first-hand how massive are the profits and how terrible are the costs generated by their predatory practices on women and girls. And all the while, our tax dollars have been helping them do it,” Thayer wrote last September in the Des Moines Register