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Thursday, January 2, 2014

Obama: Beheading for Trouble?

It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic and revealing.  PolitiFact actually took the time and effort (a questionable in its own right) to investigate the latest rightwing meme about the evils of Obamacare--that it will usher in legal...beheading.   One of their subheds is actually: Why Obamacare isn’t implementing beheading.   Then, as if for laughs--but who is laughing?--they tick off the reasons why not, including  "A doctor can’t bill an insurer for a beheading." Concluding:
Bloggers have recently offered posts headlined like this one: "Obamacare Medical Codes Confirm: Execution by Beheading To Be Implemented in America." But the coding system in question long predates Obama, and the "beheading" classification is only relevant for death statistics, not for insurance billing that would be under Obamacare’s purview.
Finally, the beheading code is for statistical purposes, not for setting policy. Any change in legal execution methods would have to be approved by the states, not by the federal government. Bloggers, in a game of telephone, have turned a questionable claim into a ridiculous one. Pants on Fire!

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