Virtual Money For Real Lobbying 85
ogaraf writes "Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that health-insurance industry group 'Get Health Reform Right' paid Facebook users with virtual currency to be used in Facebook games in exchange for lobbying their Congressional Rep. 'Instead of asking the gamers to try a product the way Netflix would, "Get Health Reform Right" requires gamers to take a survey, which, upon completion, automatically sends the following email to their Congressional Rep: "I am concerned a new government plan could cause me to lose the employer coverage I have today. More government bureaucracy will only create more problems, not solve the ones we have."'" Relatedly, Trailrunner7 illustrates growing concern over realistic spammer profiles in social networking sites and their potential to wreak havoc, especially if these two methods were combined. "Many spammers now have large staffs of people working on nothing but building out completely fake personas for non-existent users on social networking sites and blog networks. The spammers use these personas to create accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot and other sites that have high levels of user interaction."
Re:Health reform for the stupid (Score:4, Informative)
The reason is quite simple and can easily and cheaply be implemented: You're "encouraged" to get a checkup every couple years and your (mandatory) insurance pays for it. It's heaps cheaper to keep your system running than to fix it when it finally breaks down. Finding out that your blood pressure is through the roof and fixing it with a few pills (and some suggestions from your doc where you can improve your life style) is much cheaper (and much less painful) than a triple bypass.
Re:Government Bureaucracy? (Score:5, Informative)
In the realm of health care, Cuba does [realclearpolitics.com] outperform the United States.