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Wisconsin GOP Looks to Attack Reproductive Health Clinics Through Audits

Wisconsin's GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter that several “red flags” have arisen regarding government reimbursement of family planning services.

Wisconsin's GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter that several “red flags” have arisen regarding government reimbursement of family planning services. Shutterstock

Republican legislators in Wisconsin are calling for a government audit of the state’s family planning clinics that receive funding through Medicaid, including its 22 Planned Parenthood locations.

Wisconsin’s GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter that several “red flags” have arisen regarding government reimbursement of family planning services.

The controversy started in August, when two family planning organizations, the NEWCAP Community Health Services and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS), received notices from the state saying they’d incorrectly billed Medicaid in 2010 and 2011, mostly for birth control drugs and devices.

The notices, from the office of the state’s inspector general, said that an audit had found NEWCAP and FPHS owed the state about $1.17 million and $2.32 million, respectively. Neither NEWCAP nor FPHS provide abortions.

NEWCAP’s estimated revenue for all of 2014 was $1.2 million, little more than it was expected to pay back to the state. And FPHS, which has an annual revenue of about $3.4 million, operates at a loss, according to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.

Both organizations said they have been billing at the rate determined by the state Department of Health Services in 2009.

“We’ve been following the instructions we have been given, and we’ve been following them for five years,” Molly Fuller, president and chief executive of FPHS, told the Journal Sentinel.

The clinics challenged the audit’s findings, but have not received a response from the state.

Thirty-two Wisconsin Republican legislators charge that the state should audit all of Wisconsin’s family planning Medicaid providers. The lawmakers in January wrote a letter to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, asking that it take a closer look at the details of the clinics’ Medicaid billings.

“Any sort of audit of family planning providers is only going to show widespread compliance,” Nicole Safar, policy director of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. “There is no wrongdoing, there is no fraud.”

All of the clinics are paid the same rate by the state, so an audit would uncover the same facts across the board, Safar said in December. “We’re all doing it the same way.”

The 32 authors of the letter last month took Safar’s statement as an admission of guilt, writing:

It is peculiar and deeply troubling that any large recipient of taxpayer dollars would pre-emptively divulge that they are guilty of massively defrauding the government and actively in violation with their billing practices, with no plans to change or reimburse taxpayersand yet that is precisely what Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has admitted to doing.

Of the 32 lawmakers who signed the letter, “about half have perfect ratings from Wisconsin Right to Life, while the other half just started their jobs,” according to a review by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Wisconsin’s GOP enjoys a huge majority in the state house and an 18-14 advantage in the senate.

At least five family planning clinics have closed in the state due to cuts in state funding over the past two years. None of those clinics provided abortion.

In a recent stump speech in Iowa, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican presidential hopeful, highlighted the closure of Planned Parenthoods on his watch.