State report finds officials approved nearly $2 million in federal tax funds to kill unborn babies.
Oregon officials have misspent about $152 million in taxpayer money, including $1.8 million in federal funds allocated for abortions, according to a new report.
Oregon Health Authority director Patrick Allen recently notified Gov. Kate Brown of the state’s overpayments to contractors or other entities, according to The Oregonian. The initial report made at Brown’s behest, showed $74 million in overpayments from 2014 to 2016. The state may have overspent an additional $78 million.
The bulk of the funds went to unauthorized Medicaid payments, including $25.7 million for healthcare costs for illegal immigrants. Accounting and budgeting errors amounted to an additional $34 million owed to the state or never used. The state likely will have to repay tens of millions of dollars to the federal government, including the $1.8 million spent on abortion.
Oregon Right to Life director Lois Anderson told me that while it’s not clear how long the state has had a spending problem, she suspects it’s been years. The money spent on abortion, she said, is “very indicative of what has become a very cozy political relationship between Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry and the political leadership that we have in Oregon.” Anderson added, “It’s a pattern that I hope for the sake of all of us in Oregon will stop soon. They should be taking better care of our tax dollars.”
Oregon recently passed a law that forces health insurance plans to cover all costs of contraception and abortion and allocates $500,000 to cover contraception and abortions for illegal immigrants.
Implementation of that law helped uncover some of the hefty Medicaid overpayments for illegal immigrants, Allen stated in his letter to Brown. As state employees examined the numbers, they realized women in the country illegally may have received healthcare after they had their babies. Immigrants are only eligible for Medicaid payments for emergency room visits and prenatal and delivery care.
Until the state’s leadership changes, Anderson doesn’t expect Oregon’s financial woes to disappear. But she remains optimistic the recent publicity will spark some governmental accountability: “There’s a balance of understanding the political reality of Oregon, but also being hopeful that now that it’s been exposed that there would at least be some motivation to change it and to stop illegally spending federal dollars.”
— by Samantha Gobba