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Anti-Abortion Extremist Guilty of Defrauding the ACA Marketplaces

Anti-abortion extremist leader Jeff White and his son pleaded guilty on October 12 to defrauding the Affordable Care Act marketplaces in at least 12 states of over $27 million.

The pair created fake addresses and phone numbers in order to enroll individuals in state healthcare programs that were not the states in which they resided. Instead, the state programss they enrolled people in were the ones that paid the highest amounts for substance abuse treatment. The Whites would then direct these new fraudulent enrollees to the most expensive rehab programs, which would in turn pay the Whites thousands of dollars for their lucrative referrals, and sometimes even kick back a percentage of the insurance payments.

Scams like this result in residents of the 12 states paying higher insurance premiums and receiving fewer services. According to the Department of Justice, it is the first case of its kind.

White is a vocal critic of the ACA and the notorious co-founder of the anti-abortion extremist group Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, which advocates guerrilla warfare against abortion providers. He is also the former president of Operation Rescue West and leads a summer boot camp that teaches young people about anti-abortion protest tactics. White has been arrested over a hundred times for actions related to his anti-abortion extremism.

The Feminist Majority Foundation’s (FMF) 2016 National Clinic Violence Survey found that 91.1 percent of clinics experience some type of anti-abortion activity, such as protesting, with 63.2 percent of providers experiencing activity at least once a week, and a quarter of clinics experiencing it every day. Blocking access to a clinic is considered one of the most severe types of threats and violence experienced by clinics. The number of clinics who report these experiences has skyrocketed since 2014, from 19.7 percent to 34.2 percent.

 

Sources: Washington Post 4/25/04; BBC 1/3/17; Feminist Newswire 2/14/17; Department of Justice 10/12/18; Rewire 10/17/18

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