Faith and Freedom - Planned Parenthood Is Caught in Medicaid Fraud

0:00Welcome to Faith and Freedom. We hope to inform, inspire, and encourage you to stand up for Faith and Freedom as we discuss victories and challenges in the courts, in public policy and in the culture. Faith and Freedom is brought to you by Liberty Council, a litigation, education, and policy organization. Join us now as we address the latest cultural issues across America and around the world. The Planned Parenthood is caught in Medicaid fraud. We're going to be talking about this on Faith and Freedom. I met Staver founder in Chairman of Liberty Council, joining me is Holly Mead. You know, it's just really tragic. I mean, Planned Parenthood makes billion dollar industry. Let's say that off of killing babies and then selling their body parts. So we talked a lot about that. When we were representing Sandra Merritt, she was one of the undercover journalists who exposed that they're harvesting and selling these precious babies body parts, which is horrific. But because Planned Parenthood is such a huge giant, they could easily come in and win these cases when they're the ones that are guilty.

1:11Yeah, so this is an interesting case because there is a connection to our client Sandra Merritt. We'll talk about that in a minute. This case particularly rises out of the state of Texas. So in fact, Sandra Merritt, going back to 2015, along with David Delayden, they begin to meet with Planned Parenthood executives and doctors in public places at conferences and also abortion, body part procurement companies. Companies that actually would buy the body parts of babies from these abortion clinics and some of these people were wearing two hats. They might be a medical director for Planned Parenthood. On the one hand, that was the hat they wore. And on the other hand, they also had an association with the company that was buying the body parts. So they were getting paid some of them on both sides, the abortion side and the procurement side as well. So Sandra Merritt, David Delayden, set up some dinners, lunches in public places, very high traffic places at conference centers and so forth and had conversations as though they were individuals who were interested in purchasing baby body parts.

2:22Which is what undercover journalists do if they think they're going to reveal something that's criminal. They can do that. James O'Keefe does it all the time. Exactly. And so that's what they were doing. It was perfectly legal to do so. They recorded the conversations. They were very public because these were places that were in public. These were places where you wouldn't expect privacy. Some of the conversations, one of the conversations, by the way, was in an elevator where one of the individuals were talking to one of the people that was being recorded. And more people got on the elevator. Typically, if you want a conversation that's private, what do you do? You stop talking. Right. Because it's kind of hard to escape that. Right. But if the person continues to talk, then obviously they're not concerned about confidentiality or privacy. And so, these people are probably kind of proud of it actually. Yeah, they're pretty proud of it. And it's very sad. It's very dark, but they're proud of what they do. And so, some of these individuals sitting across the table, one of them in particular, Dr. Nukotola, and there's another one as well. They said how they were actually procuring the baby body parts. In one case, they were thinking that they were pretty good at this because they were turning the baby, bringing the baby out feet first so the baby would be still alive.

3:32They didn't want to inject the toxins into the baby because that would interfere with research if you had the poisons in the baby. So, these babies then were dissected and dismembered alive while their portion of their body was still in the womb and they would consider that an abortion. So, the head may still be in the womb while they're dissecting the body alive in some cases. And they said, oh, they got pretty good at it. They were selling brains and lungs and hearts, livers, bones and marrow and all kinds of things. Well, they were eating their lunch. And they're talking about this kind of while they're eating lunch. And then one lady was joking to Sandra Marenda, David Leiden, that she wanted to buy a Lamborghini. So, this is planned as a result of those videos, they were very explosive. They were released after 2015 and Kamala Harris in California, then Attorney General came after David Leiden raided his house and took all of the equipment so no more videos could be released.

4:32Now, those have subsequently been shown in Congress, so they're now public. But at any rate, what happened is when those videos became known to the public, the Texas legislature removed Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid receiving side because they did not want to fund Planned Parenthood, which was performing these abortions. And it all started because of the videos of Sandra Marenda, David Leiden. Well, they got removed by Texas. But what did they do? Well, what Planned Parenthood always does, they didn't really care. So, they continued to bill Medicaid, $17 million in taxpayer money. And they were obligated to return that within a very short period of time once they realized that they were not supposed to be billing. But what they do, they build Texas, they received Medicaid funds, and they never sent any money back to Texas.

5:34So, they were continuing to commit a fraud, contrary to what the law was allowing them to do. So, now there is the lawsuit going on because they have not refunded the $17 million that they overpaid or overcharged. Medicaid fraud is very serious. So, the state of Texas is coming after Planned Parenthood and their affiliates. And they could be forced to pay up to $1.8 billion in a massive federal Medicaid fraud case. Oh, this is just horrendous. I mean, it's all about bottom line money. I mean, you mentioned Kamala Harris earlier. Well, they were putting money in her pockets, just like the previous Attorney General. And after that, you know, it's all about they are paying these people to get them more money. But while this situation was ongoing in Texas, Planned Parenthood challenged the law, but the law was upheld or the action was upheld. But while the case was progressing and Planned Parenthood was on the losing side, Planned Parenthood affiliates submitted 144,411 Medicaid claims involving approximately $17 million in taxpayer payments across Texas and Louisiana.

6:53And the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Federal Court of Appeals, governs both Texas and Louisiana. So eventually Planned Parenthood's court protection collapsed. And a federal judge ruled that Planned Parenthood affiliates had an obligation to return these Medicaid overpayments. And the Federal Judge now then ruled you've got to return these overpayments of 144,000, point or 11 claims, amounting to approximately $17 million. But they needed to be paid back within 60 days. But you know what? Planned Parenthood refused to pay it back. Here's the point. We need to end Planned Parenthood's federal funding for good. Now for one year, Congress, both the House and Senate actually passed a bill as part of the budget to remove Planned Parenthood from federal funding. Wasn't that in the big, beautiful bill? Wasn't that part of that?

7:53That was in the big, beautiful bill. It was signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, by the way, 2025. And the Republicans had in the bill a longer period of time that Planned Parenthood would be defunded. It's not just Planned Parenthood. It's other large abortion facilities, but Planned Parenthood certainly falls into that category. They had it for, I think, maybe five plus years or so, maybe even seven years. But the parliamentarian, the parliamentarian, who really needs to be replaced on the Senate side, said no. That is not going to pass because it's part of budget. A budget is a special bill. There is no 60-vote filibuster on budget. It's just a majority vote. So only certain things can be in the budget bill. And you can defund for one year, but you can't defund for five or seven years. So the Republicans, knowing that they wouldn't be able to overcome the 60-vote margin in 2025 because of the Democrats, they reduced the funding time frame from the one that they wanted to one year to pass the parliamentarians ruling. And so that passed. It was part of the big, beautiful bill.

9:08So for one year, from July 2025 to July 4, 2026, no funding for Planned Parenthood. After that, however, right now. Where we are right now. It expired, right? It expired. So Planned Parenthood can receive more funding under federal taxpayer dollars. So here's the thing. We're now having to go to another budget. They're calling it Reconciliation 3.0, where we have to have a budget by the end of September. There's discussion where Congress might come up with an agreement to kick it down the road, pass the midterms, and then address this issue later in the year. Either way, this issue is coming. We need to let members of Congress, the House, particularly on the Senate side, that there should be not one penny going to Planned Parenthood funding, not one penny at all should fund Planned Parenthood, no Planned Parenthood, no big abortion funding. Well, as you can tell, we're passionate about defending these precious human lives from the moment of conception. So to learn more about what Liberty Council is doing in the pro-life movement and what you can do to get involved, visit Liberty Council's website, lc.org-forward-slashlife. That's lc.org-forward-slashlife.

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