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written by Trudy Lieberman

Two weeks ago a Midwest businessman sent an email to a long list of his senior friends warning that their Medicare Part B premiums would reach $247 a month by 2014. “These are provisions incorporated in the Obamacare legislation,” he wrote, and they “are purposely delayed so as not to cause Obama problems in the 2012 re-election campaigns.” He urged recipients to forward the email to “all seniors you know so they will know who’s throwing them under the bus. Remember This In November 2012 and vote!!!”

It sounded like a GOP campaign ad, and it may well have political roots for all I know, but it was part of a mass email that “has been circulating since before the 2010 elections” and “has no basis in fact,” wrote Patricia Barry, senior editor of the AARP Bulletin, last December. The message was still circulating in early July, when Kelly Greene of The Wall Street Journal reported that Journal readers had contacted the paper wanting to know if those numbers in the mass email were true. “The short answer is no,” Greene wrote. She went on to report that the Part B premiums for 2013 and 2004 have not yet been set.