On Monday, Louisiana is set to cut Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood.
Switching up tactics in their legal battle with abortion providers, state health officials said that the organization violated state law when they entered a $4.3 million false-claims-act settlement two years prior in Texas, according to Bloomberg.
After this, the clinics’ bid to hold on to their Medicaid funding via a court challenge may be done. But the clinics have said and hold to that the state is not able to end their contracts without evidence of wrongdoing.
Earlier in the week, the Obama administration warned the state that it is illegal to cut off a qualified Medicaid provider if they do not have a strong valid reason. Louisiana stands strong in their conviction that the contracts gave it the right to break off the relationship for no reason at all.
The civil statement in Texas with Planned Parenthood gave Louisiana the justification it needed to destroy the clinics’ contracts under the state’s administrative code. A spokeswoman for the state health agency, Olivia Watkins, said on Friday.
“During the course of the state investigation into Planned Parenthood, it was discovered that Planned Parenthood is in violation of long-standing administrative rules applicable to Medicaid providers,” Hwang said in the statement.
She said that on Monday, there will in fact be a notice excluding Planned Parenthood from the Medicaid program.
The spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, Daniele Wells, did not respond with a comment.
The announcement from Louisiana came on Friday only a few hours after Planned Parenthood sued Arkansas to challenge Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson’s plan to stop Medicaid funding. The group is also set to sue Alabama where their Republican Governor Robert Bentley said on August 6 that he would also put a stop to the organization’s Medicaid funding as soon as possible.