Iowa whistle-blower suit charges Planned Parenthood with Medicaid fraud

A 17-year-old former Planned Parenthood whistleblower here in Iowa filed suit in Federal court July 5, charging that between 2002 and 2009 Planned Parenthood filed nearly half a million fabricated claims with Medicaid, bringing in some $28,000,000.


Sue Thayer was the clinic director at Planned Parenthood's Storm Lake clinic. If she wins her suit, Planned Parenthood may have to pay out up to $5,500,000,000 in damages and penalties.


Thayer charges that Planned Parenthood, having noticed that approximately half of its clients did not renew their supply of birth control pills after the inital three month's supply, dropped its requirement that women be seen for a physical examination before more pills were prescribed and simply sent clients a year's supply. Not only were follow-up exams omitted, Thayer says, but Medicaid was charged even for pills the Postal Service returned because the addressee had moved and left no forwarding address- and then resold them.


Thayer also charges that patients were illegally steered toward abortion as a method of birth control and that money was extorted from Medicaid patients in the form of "voluntary contributions." She also states that complaints had been received from local doctors that birth control pills were being overprescribed.