Eighth Circuit Supports Inmate’s Right to Abortion

Posted on: August 19, 2008  |   Author: Amanda
Filed Under: Bioethics, Other   |   Leave a Comment

Earlier this year, the Eighth Circuit handed down a ruling upholding a Missouri District Court holding that female prisoners have a constitutionally protected interest in being provided transportation for elective abortion procedures. The case was brought before the Court by a female inmate, Jane Roe, as a class action lawsuit challenging a policy instituted by the Missouri Department of Corrections (MDC) prohibiting transportation for non-essential abortions. Roe challenged the policy on the basis that it violated her Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and inhumane punishment and her Fourteenth Amendment right to privacy under due process.
The Eighth Circuit struck down the District Court’s rationale that Roe’s Eighth Amendment rights were violated when she was denied transportation, and thus an abortion, and that it resulted in cruel and unusual punishment in denying necessary medical care. The Eighth Circuit dismissed this argument quite easily and held on this point that a non-therapeutic abortion was not a serious or abnormal medical need, and therefore the prison policy denying such transportation was not an Eighth Amendment violation.
Ultimately, the Court found the policy unconstitutional on the grounds that it did in fact violate a female prisoner’s Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. Using the Turner balancing test, the Court found that 1) the policy did not have a reasonable relationship to the government’s legitimate penological interest in security and keeping prisoners confined; 2) the policy did not give female prisoners any alternative mean of obtaining an elective abortion; 3) the policy will have, at most, a minimal impact on other inmates and prison resources; and 4) Roe could not point to any other alternative that fully accommodated female prisoners rights to have an abortion.
While this holding may seem ethically shocking to some, and an expansion of prisoner’s rights to others, the right for a woman to have an abortion is a protected interest as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States. In opposition to this holding, the argument could be made that this is one “liberty” that female prisoners surrendered when they stopped being an active, law abiding citizen of society. Aside from the constitutionally protected right to privacy argument that the Eighth Circuit found persuasive, it is also convincing that people, including all women, have a basic legal and moral right to control their own bodies, regardless of their “status” in the community.

It is clear that this holding supports the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade and is just one more concrete action supporting the right of abortion, but one thing is almost certain—this controversial issue will not soon fade away.

Roe v. Crawford, 514 F.3d 789 (8th Cir. 2008).

State Medicaid Fails to Report Exclusions to Health and Human Services

Posted on: August 19, 2008  |   Author: Jennifer
Filed Under: Fraud & Abuse, Medicaid   |   Leave a Comment

A recent survey shows that states routinely fail to notify federal authorities after they act to exclude health care providers from Medicaid. Providers may be excluded based on a number of reasons including fraud, incompetence, patient abuse, or licensing board sanctions. Last year, the inspector general for Health and Human Services added 3,308 providers to the federal exclusions database. However, the recent survey found that many more providers could have been added to the federal exclusions list if states exclusion actions had been properly reported.

The investigation surveyed the states and discovered that 61 percent of the 4,319 sanctions imposed by state Medicaid could not be found on the federal exclusion list. The lack of notice provided by state authorities to the federal government makes it easier for excluded providers to move from state to state in order to continue to receive federal health care reimbursement. State officials frequently reported that they were unclear as to what information required forwarding to Health and Human Services and have suggested a more coordinated effort for states to make referrals to the federal government.

For more information, see http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h4Xhle-bKAcYE83pGW75xsnFsEDAD92GGV180

Medicaid Fraud Scheme Aimed at California Homeless

Posted on: August 19, 2008  |   Author: Justin
Filed Under: Fraud & Abuse, Medicaid, Other   |   Leave a Comment

Article from The New York Times written by Solomon Moore.

State and local officials in Los Angeles have uncovered a hospital scheme that used homeless individuals to defraud federal and state health insurance programs of millions of dollars. In order to receive Medicaid and Medi-Cal funds, at least three private for-profit hospitals in the Los Angeles area are believed to have participated in a fraud scheme wherein hospital patient recruiters would locate homeless indivdiuals in the Los Angeles area and pay them cash to come to the hospital to receive health care that would later be billed to the insurance programs. Often the homeless persons received no health care, and in some instances they receivedunneccesary health care that created health risks to the individuals. Court papers say that one individual received an treatment for a non-existent condition that caused a dangerous drop in blood pressure, and for her trouble, the individual was given money with which she purchased crack cocaine. Lawsuits filed allege that the scheme involved various hospitals and doctors who billed Medicaid and Medi-Cal for thousands of fake treatments. The scale of this fraud scheme is unusual and involved fake companies and contracts with people committing the fraud, kickbacks to doctors, and hospital coverups of the kickbacks. The nature and extent of this fraud scheme appears to far outreach the typical claims implicating smaller doctors’ offices; and, as at least three hospitals participated in this particular scheme, a question exists as to whether other hospitals or doctors in other parts of the country are involved in similar schemes to defraud state and federally funded health insurance programs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/us/10homeless.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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