Yesterday my wife came home with a passel of worries about Obamacare. She wanted me to go online and find out if what she had been told was true. It seems one of her coworkers had heard something on the radio that had her worried. There was talk about the IRS, an Obesity surcharge, a smokers surcharge… A whole lot of really crazy stuff… Internet Crazy Stuff.

As I questioned her it came out that the coworker had been listening to AM740 News Radio. They call themselves Houston’s News, Weather, & Traffic Station. They are also the Houston Home of Rush and Sean and company. They are one of the Clear Channel stations. I told her all of this even before I went looking for the stories she heard about… And guess what I found?

Feb. 8, 2013, Washington, D.C.: Majority Democrats in both houses of Congress on a party-line vote yesterday passed sweeping new legislation radically affecting the behavior of all Americans. The bill, crafted by recently re-elected President Obama, levies steep new taxes on those who fail to conform to a host of health and environmental mandates. via Rosen: The slippery slope of Obamacare – The Denver Post.

Do you notice the dateline? When you look at the actual post date you see it was written in July 2012…If you read the whole piece you begin to understand that it was a scare piece written in the middle of a Presidential campaign by a conservative radio host. So one charge down, one to go.

The Affordable Care Act…allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1.

For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums…via A Double Whammy for Smokers: An ObamaCare Tax | John Goodman’s Health Policy Blog | NCPA.org.

Now we even have the numbers my wife was given…The crazy thing about this is that the piece doesn’t say Obamacare will mandate anything. The individual policy referred to in the piece is a figment of everyone’s imagination. Have you ever looked for that policy as a 55 year old smoking male? A $4,300 yearly surcharge would be the least of your problems… Finding an insurance company that would actually sell you a policy would be your problem.

Now the problem with all of this is… Both of these ladies work in the Healthcare industry. So if what they are hearing and talking about is this crazy…Just what are regular people thinking as they hear all of this crap?

And I guess my real question is… What was the story on the radio that started this conversation?

p.s. In doing my “research” for this piece I discovered an alternate source of facts. They call it Conservapedia – The Trustworthy Encyclopedic. Like wow, talk about alternative realities…