Health insurance industry groups are tricking Facebook users into sending anti-reform letters.

[Maraya1969]

Health insurance industry trade groups opposed to President Obama's health care reform bill are paying Facebook
users fake money -- called "virtual currency" -- to send letters to Congress protesting the bill.

Here's how it's happening:

Facebook users play a social game, like "FarmVille" or "Friends For Sale." They get addicted to it. Eager to accelerate their progress inside the game, the gamers buy "virtual goods" such as a machine gun for "Mafia Wars." But these gamers don't buy these virtual goods with real money. They use virtual currency.

The gamers get virtual currency three ways:

* Winning it playing the games
* Paying for it with real money
* By accepting offers from third-parties -- usually companies like online movie rentals service Netflix -- who agree to give the gamer virtual currency so long as that gamer agrees to try a product or service. This is done through an "offers" provider -- a middleman that brings the companies like Netflix, the Facebook gamemakers, and the Facebook gamemaker's users together.

It's this third method that an anti-reform group called "Get Health Reform Right" is using to pay gamers virtual currency for their support.

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."

http://www.businessinsider.com/health-insures-caught-paying-facebook-users-virtual-currency-to-send-letters-to-congress-opposing-reform-bill-2009-12

[kerrywins]

1. Why Wouldn't Insurance Companies Want Gov. to Force People To Buy Their Product?

doesn't make any sense....
wouldn't any company welcome the gov. to force people to buy their product?

[Maraya1969]

2. Well if the right wing is in bed with the insurance industry why do they

fight reform every step of the way?

Maybe the influx of insurance premiums that they are going to get does not counter the amount of money they will lose by insuring people who they would refuse to insure in the past. And taking away the cap on the amount of money that they have to pay out is not worth the extra either. So the are getting more money in premiums but they are going to have to pay out a lot more also.

The insurance industry made billions in profits last year and years before that and they did it by refusing to pay out when they should have. And these loop holes are being covered over by the new health reforms.

They are spending a million dollars a day trying to fight reform so there must be something they don't like about it. I don't think that after this reform is put into place the health care industry will continue to make windfall profits.

(my computer keys keep jumping around and deleting sentences and paragraphs so please just read between the lines if words are not in their right place, even though I am going to try and fix all of the mistakes)

[Maraya1969]

3. Kicking myself since Rachael Maddow seems it's important too

[cynatnite]

4. I'm done with Facebook...

I tried it at the urging of some family and I knew a few friends were on it as well. It just got too weird for me so I quit going.

[moondust]

5. Conspiracy.

Along with all the phony TV commercials, blatant lies, etc., this stuff constitutes conspiracy against the American people in my book. They know it's pure bullshit that serves their bottom line. It amazes me that they can get away with it so easily.