Obama's Health Plan Gets Facebook App
Anyone who has ever tried to keep the peace is told to avoid two topics: religion and politics. The latter is precisely the reason a flame war has ensued on Facebook. In an effort to personalize healthcare reform benefits, WhiteHouse.gov launched a "Reality Check" Facebook quiz application to rally for President Barack Obama's widely disputed Health Insurance Reform Plan. While the application was only shared with Facebook users 6 hours ago, 350 people have already commented on everything from education, to war, to congressional travel records to general partisanship.
The Health Insurance Reform Plan is receiving the same sort of reception as Barack Obama himself with some netizens supporting it while others accusing it of being simultaneously Socialist and Fascist.
The quiz asks a number of questions including, "Have you or others in your family been seriously ill?" and "Do you think premiums are rising too fast?" From here, the application creates a personalized statement of benefits and users can choose to publish these statements to their Facebook wall. For the most part, this is a well built outreach tool. However, the quiz could be more informative if the "Read the Plan" link actually linked to passages relevant to each user's quiz results. This would ensure that netizens understood the actual plan rather than the messaged benefit statements.
The Obama administration has always had a strong Facebook presence. An average of 4000 status updates per minute were being broadcast alongside a live Facebook video feed during the inauguration. The first White House Live Facebook App was simply a continuation of that service. The quiz app is the group's first issues-based application.
In addition to the Facebook applications and activities, the Reality Check Health Care Reform campaign also posts regular updates to the White House Twitter feed, MySpace page and YouTube channel. To take the quiz visit apps.facebook.com/healthreformquiz.
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FAIL!
Dear President Obama,
Make sure you staff actually add SOME dynamic aspect to the Facebook app. In its current state, that app adds absolutely ZERO value to a Facebook user. It Merely spits out the same verbatim statements about your plan.
You're going to annoy a LOT of people and appear very, very un-cool.
Sincerely,
A supporter of your health care reform campagin
Nowadays the numbers of facebook users are touchs the sky so its good idea to have facebook application on Obama's health.. I hope its gonna so helpful to Obama's health because on facebook he got the so much of good ideas for his health from the lot of facebook users..
“President Obama’s speech last week really moved me. Despite what my colleagues think of me. If what he says is what will EXACTLY happen, how can I not hope and work towards that cause”? Mike Oliphant runs a small Utah health insurance website www.benefitsmanager.net/SelectHealth.html and www.dentalinsuranceutah.net whom deals with hundreds of people on a day to day struggle to be approved for health insurance. “I get hopeful that I can finally tell people they can qualify for coverage REGARDLESS of their pre-existing medical condition”. Mike’s concern is that Obama’s people won’t deliver what he urges on areas within his speech. “I really have been moved by this guy and wish we could just talk so he could understand the frustration of a health insurance agent. I have been involved on a political level within the state of Utah and their struggle for health care reform. I have seen and regrettably been part of politics at work. I have learned lessons through baptism of fire with politics. For instance, I struggled against House Speaker Clark and H.B. 188 because that was what I was urged to do from our industry (that was all I knew). But after awhile and countless meetings with state and private carriers in Utah, I began asking myself if I was doing the right thing. I realized over time that House Speaker Clark really means what he says and is hard nose about getting reform done in Utah. I got that there wasn’t any behind the scene conspiracy scheme or personal objective of Mr. Clark. His bill makes allot of positive changes in the “health insurance reform” world of Utah. He claims that reform just doesn’t stop there, it must continue through “health care reform”. You see, there is a major difference between the two reforms. Clark “gets it” but I really worry that Obama’s administration doesn’t because if you have noticed the subtle language change of dropping “health care reform” and going to “health insurance reform”. See more about what Utah has accomplished here which utilizes private carrier involvement with true reform. If you can believe it, they reached it with an objective of $500,000. Perhaps the feds should take a look at Utah and House Speakers Clark’s bill 188. www.prweb.com/releases/utah_health_insurance/health_care_reform/prweb2614544.htm. Now I find myself on the “other side” of the fence furthering Utah’s cause. Let’s hope we don’t all have a mental breakdown nationally and just take a honest look at the proposals.
I would dearly love for Barack Obama to answer THIS Nine-Hundred-Billion-Dollar Question: Mr. President, we all heard you adamantly deny to Chris Wallace that the health care fine is a tax. In that case, if the only Constitutional authority the federal government has for extracting money from citizens is taxation and you insist this fine is not taxation, then, 1) what recourse can you possibly have, under the Constitution, if people refuse to pay this fine-which-is-not-a-tax, and 2) who precisely is going to be collecting these fines-which-are-not-a-tax, since presumably this is outside the purview of the Internal Revenue Service?
An additional comment in response to the article on this site seeming to express a certain incredulity that the same program (or person) could be called both "fascist" and "socialist": learn your history. The fascists WERE socialists. Don't you even know what the word "Nazi" means?
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