If you want to stay up to date with the current trends in health, it would help to read at least one or two health news articles daily. Even if you are under the care of a good general practitioner, you can never be sure that he is aware of all the latest in health news. Health articles sometimes need months, even years, before they generate enough popularity for people to take note of them. It seems that people who read health newsletters, health bloggers, and health pioneers are the only ones able to keep abreast of the most recent developments.

Regular reading of health articles is beneficial especially if you are dealing with any chronic health problem. Scientists researching on the many different diseases are on the verge of finding a cure. Reports are made almost everyday about a new radical treatment for AIDS, cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. There are diseases deemed hopeless just a few years ago that can now be treated with newly formulated drugs and other unconventional methods.

Needless to say, caution is necessary when reading any health article particularly if the item was penned by a journalist without any scientific or medical background. Health articles are usually slanted towards promises of miraculous cures, which would only be disproved later. An ordinary reporter may reference the health article on complicated research studies that are often times beyond his comprehension. Thus, it comes as no surprise if the report will focus on the therapeutic claims scientists make while remaining silent on the veracity of such claims. Even preliminary findings are presented as if they are already the conclusions and recommendations.

Therefore, you need to make sure before following any of the recommendations given in a health article. When you are able to distinguish the good from the bad, you will find that there are many health articles that include sensible advice. You can learn on ways of getting the best workout, choosing the foods to eat or avoid to alleviate seasonal problems, and similar things. However, be wary about health articles that sound too good to be true. If you are interested about a miracle cure mentioned in a health article, it is best that you talk with your physician before experimenting with it. Being skeptical is good once in a while if only to be realistic. It will also prevent you from trying every new thing that comes out. On the other hand, if a health article sounds really convincing, logical and right, you may do test it out. Health article recommendations are, at the very least, unlikely to be harmful. For all you know, it could be the miracle cure you are waiting for.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ We’ve resolved to eat better, lace up the running shoes, shed a few pounds, quit smoking and lead healthier lives.

If we could keep our promises beyond the first couple weeks of the new year, perhaps our health care system wouldn’t be as bloated as it is.

Indeed, some of the responsibility for health care costs sits squarely on the shoulders of consumers who make unhealthy choices _ by supersizing meals, quenching thirst with sugar-laden sodas, filling lungs with tobacco and taking a less active role in maintaining their overall fitness.

“As important as health reform is, the real answer in reforming America’s health care system is to empower individuals to make better choices about what we eat and how we live,” said Daniel Zingale, a senior vice president at the California Endowment, a health foundation.

While debate remains in Congress over health care legislation, wellness advocates are hopeful that less controversial provisions promoting healthy living will remain in any bill that reaches the president’s desk.

“As preventable illnesses and injuries are the most significant drivers of increasing health care costs,” the Oakland, Calif.-based Prevention Institute said in a letter to the White House, “it is essential that we reorient our health care system from an after-the-fact approach to one that focuses on keeping people healthy in the first place.”

The House bill includes $34 billion for a public health investment fund, including $15.4 billion for prevention and wellness programs.

The Senate bill is less generous, providing $15 billion for a prevention and public health fund, some of which could be used for so-called community transformation grants to fund parks and urban trails and to promote access to nutrition.

The Senate bill also would establish a national council that takes a broad approach to drafting a health care strategy that integrates transportation, agriculture, education and employment policies. And it would adopt California’s pioneering law requiring fast-food outlets and chain restaurants to provide nutrition information.

“This is the first time in recent history that community and government strategies will align to help support us in the resolutions we make on New Year’s Day,” said Larry Cohen, the Prevention Institute’s executive director.

Wellness and prevention have been “totally lost in the discussion over the health care bill,” Cohen said, “because it’s … been recognized by both sides as being worthwhile.”

By 2017, U.S. health care could account for $4.3 trillion in annual spending, or a fifth of every dollar spent in the overall economy, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. Much of that could go to preventable conditions linked to obesity, smoking, diabetes and heart disease.

Indirect and direct costs of smoking are now $193 billion a year, about half spent on medical expenses, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2007, diabetes accounted for $116 billion. In 2009, heart disease was expected to cost the country $305 billion for care services, medication and lost productivity, according to the CDC.

Obesity costs the nation as much as $147 billion annually, according to a government study released in July.

In California, the national symbol for healthy living, one in every four people is now considered obese. In 1985, when the CDC began measuring the nation’s expanding girth, 9 percent of the state’s residents were classified as obese.

“Sugar-sweetened beverages are the single-biggest culprit in the obesity epidemic,” said Harold Goldstein, executive director of the Davis-based California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

“The simplest thing people can do is drink water instead of soda. It would save everybody money in these hard economic times … and it would have a dramatic impact on the obesity epidemic.”

For years, experts have preached healthy living to reduce the rates of chronic conditions.

To save on costs and boost productivity, employers and insurers over the years launched wellness programs to promote healthy habits.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s second-largest purchaser of health care, has long promoted so-called wellness programs.

Last year, CalPERS posted the lowest increases for health premiums in 14 years, part of which it attributed to reduced use of health care services by its members.

“The effect of lifestyle decisions on health do matter in the overall control of health care costs,” said Patrick Johnston, president of the California Association of Health Plans. “What works financially for the individual also works for health plans. … Lower health care costs mean health insurance coverage can be more affordable, and if insurance is more affordable, more people can be covered.”

Ellen Wu, executive director of the Oakland-based California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, isn’t about to let the health care industry off the hook.

“Our health care system shares some of the responsibility for our increasing health care costs,” Wu said, noting that profit-minded industries make it difficult for people to access routine health care.

“It’s a shared responsibility. We cannot expect individuals to be healthier without an environment that promotes health. … I think you have to give people the opportunity to live healthy.”

Communities need access to healthy food and safe public parks in which to exercise, she said.

“We are a nation of sick care. We don’t do health care,” she said. “Because we do sick care, that’s reflected in how we set everything up.”

Gaining health insurance will allow those who are now uninsured access to doctors for regular checkups and routine care that in the long run could relieve the need for expensive emergency room visits.

Even so, people will have to take a more active role in maintaining good health, Wu and others acknowledge.

Healthier lifestyles could reduce health care spending, but on a personal level folks will reap the benefits, too, in the form of fewer trips to the physician _ meaning fewer co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses _ and less time away from work, said Dr. Lisa Liu, a physician at Kaiser Permanente’s Elk Grove medical offices.

“There is a linkage there between health care utilization and cost. As individuals, there are ramifications associated with bad habits. People need to take personal accountability for their health,” she said.

Setting goals is a good start, Liu said.

But “making them and keeping them are totally different. The challenge is picking the right resolution,” she said. “Simply saying ‘I’m going to lose weight,’ is just a wish and not an active plan. … New Year’s resolutions need to be reasonable and achievable.”

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The polyphenols and curcuminoids inside curcumin seem to interrupt the spreading and development of tumors and cancer cells. It has also been known to help clear amyloid proteins responsible for causing Alzheimer’s disease, help relieve inflammatory bowel disease, lower cholesterol, prevent free radical damage, reduce symptoms of arthritis, and more. It was only over the last 10 years that studies and clinical tests have shown the multiple uses for the nutrient.

All the new knowledge about what this nutrient can do makes it worth adding to your diet. But how much do you need to take and what do you need to look for?

While the nutrient is available in turmeric, there is only 3-5% of the active ingredient inside a tsp of the spice. So you would have to eat lots of it every day to get the benefits.

The better option is to take it as a supplement capsule. A good supplement will include 95% or more of the extract and also ensures you get a reliable dose of the nutrient. With piperine (from black pepper) and enteric coating, the absorbability is increased. The addition of green tea extract increases the effectiveness and potency of the nutrient as well.

Are there side effects of taking the supplement? While there are no major side effects of taking curcumin, taking too much of it can cause an upset stomach and stimulate bowel movement. Because the nutrient also triggers bile production and flow, people with gallbladder stones should be careful when taking it as stones which are too big to be passed can cause complications. Also, too much of the nutrient is not necessarily good, a daily dose of 20-50 mg is recommended so just because a supplement contains 200-500 mg or more doesn’t mean it is better.

Clearly, the health benefits of curcumin make it one of the few nutrients out there that you should take if you want to support your health and help defend against many different ailments. Along with a healthy diet and active lifestyle, getting the nutrition we need from supplements can help improve the quality of your life. Isn’t it time you enjoyed the health benefits of taking curcumin daily?

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NASHVILLE, Tenn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Marathon Health and Healthcarebluebook.com today announced a co-marketing agreement to bring new consumer education and healthcare price transparency tools to employers with consumer directed health plans (CDHP) or high deductible health plans (HDHP).

The joint offering extends Marathon Health’s onsite clinic capabilities by helping employees with significant out of pocket expenses make informed, cost conscious decisions on treatment. Both onsite clinicians and employees will have access to the Healthcare Blue Book’s education and healthcare price transparency tool. Marathon Health clinic patients can access the Blue Book tool directly from the Marathon eHealth Portal, or work with their onsite clinician to consider treatment options, understand out of pocket costs, and make smarter, more affordable treatment choices when seeking care outside the clinic setting.

“Price shopping for healthcare services can be time consuming and frustrating,” said Marathon Health CEO Jerry Ford. “Our co-marketing agreement with Healthcare Blue Book will help us provide a virtual ‘safety net’ for the employees with high deductible plans who require greater access to cost and care details. This addition to our technology platform will ensure our patients have the information they need when making care decisions.”

The relationship enhances Marathon Health’s value proposition for employers who offer CDHPs by bringing timely consumer decision support to the point of care. The joint offering fills a recognized gap in employers’ consumer tool set, and helps both employee and employer save money through better use of their existing provider options.

“Marathon Health and Healthcarebluebook.com are innovative companies creating new models for delivering high-quality healthcare at a fair price,” said Healthcarebluebook.com CEO, Dr. Jeffrey Rice. “Joining forces will help us create systems that can benefit employers and employees through improved access to high-quality, cost-effective care.”

About Marathon Health

Marathon Health of Colchester, VT, offers a proven solution for helping employers reduce the total cost of healthcare. The Marathon Health approach integrates the best practices of onsite primary care, health assessment with risk identification, coaching and advocacy, and disease management for high cost chronic conditions. Marathon Health supports its unique model with an eHealth Portal delivering medical content, interactive diet and fitness tools, a personal health record, and an electronic medical record to manage care. www.marathon-health.com.

About the Healthcare Blue Book

Healthcarebluebook.com, headquartered in Nashville, TN, is a healthcare pricing tool that helps consumers and companies determine what fair prices are for healthcare services and treatments in their markets. The www.healthcarebluebook.com web site can be customized to employer needs by offering information that allows employees to identify lower cost and high quality providers within their existing employer-sponsored health plan.

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If you talk to most Arizona residents about cheap health insurance companies they’ll look at you as if you’re crazy. The very idea of cheap health insurance seems ludicrous to most people, especially when more than 50% of all Arizona residents who have health insurance report that they can barely afford to pay the premiums as it is. Fortunately there are several things which most people fail to take into consideration that could reduce the cost of their health insurance significantly.
A very simple thing that most people overlook is to pay their health insurance premium automatically every month from their checking or savings account. If your insurance company doesn’t have to mail you an expensive bill every month they pass the savings along to you.
If you don’t see your doctor often during a normal year, then why not increase your co-payment from the standard 25% to 50%? It will save you around 20% a month on the cost of your premium and should save you money in the long run.
What about your deductible? Can you afford to increase it? Obviously this is a question that you’ll have to consider carefully, but the higher your yearly deductible the lower your monthly premium payment is going to be.
If you’re serious about reducing the cost of your health insurance then you are going to have to be serious about not smoking or using chew or any other tobacco product. You simply will NOT get the cheapest price for health insurance if you smoke or use chew. Period.
If the cost of health insurance is still too high you might consider opening a Health Savings Account, especially if you are generally healthy. A Health Savings Account, also known as an HSA is a special savings account that you fund with cheap tax-free dollars. The catch is that you can only use the money in your HSA to pay for your medical needs during the year. Because the money in your HSA is tax-free it is equivalent to saving approximately 25% on your health needs.
Another advantage to an HSA is that if you do not use all of the money in your account in a given year then the balance rolls over into the next year, which would allow you, over time, to build up a nice tax-free nest egg.
As part of your HSA account you will be required to buy a very low-cost high-deductible health insurance policy. These cheap health insurance policies have a deductible so high that in a normal year they will not pay even a penny toward any of your health care needs – that’s what your tax-free savings account is for.
What these cheap insurance policies do is they act as a safety net to shield your life savings and even your home itself from an unexpected catastrophic accident or illness which results in enormous medical bills which otherwise could have wiped out everything you own.
There is one last thing you can do that will save you a bundle on your health insurance, and that’s to buy your policy online. In today’s world you would have to be crazy not to buy your medical insurance online since online insurance sellers offer their products at such deep discounts.
One of the tricks to finding the most affordable policy online is to make sure that you check out the prices on several different health insurance price comparison websites rather than relying on the results that you find from just one site.
But once you’ve made all of your comparisons then the fun really begins as you simply choose the cheapest health insurance company in Arizona and know that you are saving a ton of money every year while still getting the health insurance that you and your family need.

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All right, let’s finish the dumb and dumber list we started last time. Drum roll, please …

1. “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.” Investor’s Business Daily editorial, warning about end-of-life counseling in health care reform. Hawking not only lives in England, but he credits its National Health Service with saving his life. IBD might want to stick to investing advice.

2. “That’s why people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress, and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions.” Michele Bachmann, the embarrassing Republican senator from Minnesota, who is a pro-lifer. She completely missed the irony of using the exact same slogan as the pro-choice movement.

3. “Exercise freaks … are the ones putting stress on the health care system.” Rush Limbaugh, explaining why US healthcare costs are so high. Being fat, lazy and sedentary is just what the doctor ordered, Rush.

4.  “Healthcare reform will ruin the best health-care system in the world!” Glenn Beck and countless others, explaining how being #37 really means being #1. Hey, if I’m a multi-millionaire and my pool boy has access to the same healthcare I do, capitalism has failed.

5. “One in five people have to die because they went to socialized medicine! Now I’ve got three daughters and a wife. I would hate to think that among five women, one of them is going to die because we go to socialized care.” Louie Gohmert, math- and fact-challenged Texas representative, claiming that healthcare reform will kill you. Yes, he was on the House floor at the time. A classic C-SPAN moment, Louie, thank you.

Honorable Mention:

“What’s really great is if you’re really sick anywhere in the world, this is the best place to be sick, it just costs too much.” Tom Coburn on FOX News, explaining why we don’t need healthcare reform. Um, Tom, is it so great because the Republican motto is “If you do get sick, die quickly”? Thank you, Alan Grayson, for that memorable quote.

Happy New Year, everyone.

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There is tremendous fear rising on both the right and the left that the announced intention of Congress — to force every American to pay tribute to private corporations, with no government alternative — sets a dangerous and frightening precedent with implications far outside the scope of health care.

If the health care bill written by the Senate is passed, middle-class Americans will be mandated to pay almost as much to private insurance companies as they do to the federal government in taxes for insurance they can’t afford, with the IRS acting as a collection agency for penalties of 2% of their annual income if they refuse to comply.

Keith Olbermann has said he will go to jail before doing so.

But this left-right alliance against corporatism isn’t new. Many recent measures have been bringing liberal progressives and conservative libertarians together to join forces in opposition:

* Democrat Alan Grayson worked successfully this year with Republican Ron Paul to pass legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, with 317 cosponsors as diverse as Dennis Kucinich and Michelle Bachmann.

* On December 3, the liberal Campaign for America’s Future wrote a letter to the Senate opposing the reconfirmation of Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke until such an audit has been conducted. The letter was signed by James Galbraith, Robert Weisman, Chris Bowers and myself on the left, and Grover Norquist, Phillis Schlafly, and Larry Greenley on the right. Financial blogger Tyler Durden and young organizer Tiffiniy Cheng joined us.

* Also on December 3, conservative Jim Bunning joined liberal Bernie Sanders in placing a hold on the Bernanke nomination until the Fed had been audited.

* On December 15, CAF again sent a letter to the Senate Banking Committee, asking them to delay the vote on the Bernanke confirmation until Audit the Fed received a stand alone vote in the Senate. It was signed by Matt Kibbe of Freedomworks, John Tate of the Campaign for Liberty, and Grover Norquist on the right, and David Swanson of AfterDowiningStreet, Dean Baker and Robert Borosage on the left.

* On December 21, a letter was written opposing the mandate in the health care bill. It was signed by Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, Howie Klein of DownWithTyranny, Brad Friedman of Velvet Revolution, Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America on the left and Grover Norquist, Jim Martin of 60 Plus Association, Duane Parde of the National Taxpayers Union on the right.

* On December 23, Grover Norquist and I sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling for an investigation into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s conflicts of interest before the White House could lift the cap on the commitment to them from $400 billion to $800 billion with no Inspector General in place.

The individuals on both sides of the political spectrum who signed these letters agree on very little, but they do share both a tremendous concern for the corporatist control of government that politicians in both parties seem hell-bent on achieving with this health care bill.

We’ve covered the health care reform process heavily on Firedoglake, and the hypocrisy of the entire process has been staggering to watch.

In 2000, the Democrats railed in opposition when the Republicans passed Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage that didn’t allow for negotiated drug prices. And in 2006 when Democrats took over Congress, one of the hallmarks of their first hundred days was passing legislation allowing Medicare to do so, supported by both Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama.

Of course, it had no chance of passing with George Bush in the White House.

Candidate Barack Obama said the ability to negotiate for drug prices would save $30 billion a year in medical costs. Yet when President Obama was elected, he negotiated a secret deal with PhRMA that prevented drug price negotiations in exchange for $150 million in political advertising to help vulnerable Democrats in the House and in support of the health care bill.

Jaws dropped when Senator Tom Carper said that because PhRMA had paid for the deal with political advertising, they were obligated to abide by it.

But the Democrats are hardly alone. Jeff Sessions railed on the floor of the Senate against the corrupt PhRMA deal, but he didn’t mention that he voted for the 2000 bill without it. He also didn’t think it worthy of note that when he had the chance to vote for it in the Senate in 2006, he voted “no.”

Both parties are equally blameworthy — the only difference is who is in power and taking PhRMA’s money.

The PhRMA deal is one of many negotiated by the White House this last summer which formed the underpinnings of the health care bill. From then on, it just became a matter of which member was going to extract what deals for their vote, and who was going to take the blame for cutting popular elements from the legislation that the corporate “stakeholders” didn’t want.

As FDL’s Jon Walker wrote recently, if the ability to cut health care costs hadn’t been auctioned off to private corporations in exchange for political patronage, there would have been no government subsidy necessary to make insurance coverage affordable.

We are ceding control of the government to private corporations, not figuratively but literally. When the Senate Finance Committee bill was released earlier this year, the “author” was a former VP of Wellpoint. Liberals, conservatives and independents alike are all justifiably alarmed at what this represents.

It is tragic that health care for the poor is being held hostage to the corporatist agenda, a fig leaf to buy public support and disguise this bill for what it is. As blogger Marcy Wheeler noted in a piece called “Health Care and the Road to Neo-Feudalism:”

I understand the temptation to offer 30 million people health care. What I don’t understand is the nonchalance with which we’re about to fundamentally shift the relationships of governance in doing so.

Just as those on the libertarian right were demonized by the Republican establishment for opposing the Iraq war during the Bush years, so progressives on the left are being pilloried for “damaging the cause” by joining with Republicans to oppose these extreme measures. It’s ironic that the most virulent supporters of a President who ran on “bipartisanship” should reject it so vehemently when it becomes critical of the policies pursued by his White House.

But this “right-left wraparound” is happening because politicians in both parties have become so unresponsive to popular sentiment, and the political drama that plays out in the media little more than kabuki theater for the benefit of the voters. The public support for stifling investigation of the bank bailouts just to protect the President are infinitesimally small, and fortunately Dennis Kucinich announced today that he would commence an investigation into the Fannie/Freddie bailout. But it’s a testament to the extreme nature of what is happening to our government that such traditional political foes could find common cause in opposing it.

It’s foolish to say that only those who agree with you on every issue are allowed to share your opinion when it comes to opposing something like the mandated bailout of Aetna — it isn’t necessary to achieve health care reform. As Jon Walker notes, removing the mandate would reduce the CBO score and its inclusion in the health care bill with no government alternative is unacceptable for moral, political and policy reasons.

Candidate Obama himself opposed the mandate. Arianna Huffington and Howard Dean agree with him.

As Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos said, “remove the mandate or kill this bill.” We’ve opened a “war room” at Firedoglake with information about calling your member of Congress to demand that this provision to bail out the insurance industry be removed from the health care bill before they agree to cast their vote in favor of it.

And nobody needs to pass an ideological purity test before they can use it.

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FDL has become the go-to place for coverage of the health care bill due to the work of our incredible team.   Jon Walker’s second-to-none knowledge of the health care bill has made the policy and political analysis he offers up at  FDL Action a driving force.  Dave Dayen’s reporting at the FDL News Desk, Marcy Wheeler ’s research and in-depth analysis at Emptywheel, Laura Flanders’ interviews at GritTV, our FDL team of writers and editors, and our community members at The Seminal provide the most independent and comprehensive picture of what’s happening moment-by-moment on the health care debate to be found anywhere.

So, I asked them to help make it simple:  how do we let people know what’s going to happen to them if the Senate bill passes.  Everyone put their heads together and came up with a list:

Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill

1. Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations – whether you want to or not
2. If you refuse to buy the insurance, you’ll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.
3. Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can’t afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums
4. Massive restriction on a woman’s right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court
5. Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays
6. Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won’t see any benefits – like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions – until 2014 when the program begins.
7. Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others
8. Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.
9. No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years
10. The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year – meaning in 10 years, your family’s insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.

Background information on each point:

1. Hardship Waiver And Restrictions On Immigrants Buying Insurance Undercut Arguments For An Individual Mandate, by Jon Walker
2. What’s in the Manager’s Amendment by David Dayen
3. MyBarackObama Tax by Marcy Wheeler
4. Emperor Ben Nelson: All Your Uteruses Are Belong To Me by Scarecrow
5. The Senate Bill is Designed to Make Your Health Insurance Worse by Jon Walker
6. Best way to “Fix It Later” Is With No Individual Mandate Now by Jon Walker
7. The Senate Health Care Bill is Built on a Mountain of Sand by Jon Walker
8. The Devil in Anna Eshoo’s Details by Jane Hamsher
9. Liveblog of the Dorgan Reimportation Amendment by David Dayen
10. Answering Nate Silver’s 20 Questions on the Health Care Bill by Jon Walker

The Senate bill isn’t a “starter home,” it’s a sink hole.  It needs to die so something else can take its place. It doesn’t matter whether people are on the right or the left – once they understand the con job that’s about to be foist upon them, they agree.  That’s why Harry Reid and President Obama are trying to jam it through as fast as they can, before people find out.

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House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn compared health care reform to the struggle to pass the Civil Rights Act, telling a Democratic colleague that people forget the compromises needed decades ago for the legislation to break a filibuster.

In comments at the start of a conference call, Sen. Claire McCaskill made a crack that the political climate has gotten tougher since Fox News became more powerful and said that’s one reason why there is opposition to the health care plan.

“The 30-second soundbyte is what’s got all this up in the air,” agreed Clyburn (D-SC). “Every big social change you go through this. It will take six to eight years before this all settles down.”

Their remarks were captured as a Wednesday afternoon conference call about the Democratic National Committee’s proposed changes to the presidential 2012 nominating calendar began. The call was open to the press and the public.

Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights fight and longtime participant in state and federal politics, said people forget the difficulties of passing health care.

“The first civil rights bill was very comprehensive,” Clyburn said. “In order for the filibuster to be broken we had to drop off the Voting Rights [Act].”

He said there was big disagreement between Congressional leadership and Martin Luther King Jr.

“[President Lyndon] Johnson was very clear, it was not going to get done if they kept voting rights in,” he said.

Clyburn did not explicitly draw the link between health care and civil rights, but he’s been saying lately he was not confident the public option would survive a final health care bill.

McCaskill (D-MO) also said of health care politics, “Time’s on our side,” noting her seat isn’t up for reelection until 2012.

The call topic itself was fascinating, as Democrats want to take power away from the superdelegates who helped decide the 2008 primary fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. More on that here.

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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.”

Health Insurers Caught Paying Facebook Users Virtual Currency To Send Letters To Congress Opposing Reform BillOMGPOP CEO Dan Porter spotted the survey and took a screenshot for us. (Click on the image at the right to expand it.)

What is this practice called?

Paying people to act like political supporters is called “astroturfing,” because its fake grass-roots campaigning. So maybe this should be called Virtual astroturfing. Virtual-turfing? Astroturfing 2.0?

Who are the people behind this?

Get Health Reform Right describes itself as a “project of organizations whose shared mission is to ensure consumers continue to have access to employer-sponsored healthcare plans.”

We are concerned about federal legislation that would create new government bureaucracies that would unravel the workplace healthcare system where more than 160 million people get their coverage.

Under the “Who We Are” tab on GetHealthReformRight.org, the following organizations are listed:

* Association of Health Insurance Advisors
*  America’s Health Insurance Plans
*  American Benefits Council
*  BlueCross BlueShield Association
*  Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers
*  Healthcare Leadership Council
*  Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers
*  National Association of Health Underwriters
*  National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors
*  National Retail Association

Who are the gamers filling out the survey and sending emails to Congress?

Facebook gamers tend to fall into two groups: women in their 30s and 40s and teenagers of both sexes.

Is this legal?

Astroturfing, which involves real money, is not illegal, We can’t imagine virtual curreny astroturfing would be illegal either. Whether or not it’s ethical is a different question.

Who is profiting from this?

According to OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter, the middleman facilitating this transaction in multiple Facebook games is called Gambit. Up until a few weeks ago, these games included big hits like Zynga’s Mafia Wars and FarmVille. Zynga has since removed all offers from its games. On its Web site, Gambit says its clients include:

* #1 MySpace Developer
* 20%+ of top 10 Facebook applications
* SmallWorlds.com
* School Vandals
* Foopets.com
* 2 Top 100 websites
* …and over 150+ more

One important thing to remember:

Gambit is just the platform here, bringing three parties together: gamers seeking currency, game-makers seeking monetization, and companies (and, apparently lobbying groups) looking for customers.

OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter tells us it’s most likely the case that Get Health Care Reform agreed to pay an ad agency for every letter-writer it recruited. Dan supposes it was this third-party that bundled the above survey with several others and submitted it into Gambit’s offer network.

Update: We reached out to Gambit CEO Noah Kagan for clarification.  He told us:

“It’s not that Dan is wrong. But we don’t run hot political issues. You don’t have any evidence that this is from Gambit. We don’t condone this in our system. Sometimes stuff does happen, but we’ve been very proactive in making sure that there’s not negative offers in our system.”

To this, Dan replied:

“My point all along had little to do with the Gambit platform. We are testing it in house and will deploy it and it has controls for how conservative a partner wants to be. I wouldn’t use them if I didn’t think it would provide value for our users in a safe way. Gambit and every other offers company simply bundle in offers from outside vendors. The primary distributers of this fake activism are companies you will never know, like webclients.net doing business under eltpath.com. [They] distribute this stuff to sources all over the web from from freecomputer4u to sweepstakes promotions to offer providers.”

The response from Get Health Care Reform:

We’ve also contacted Get Health Care Reform using an email address listed on their Web site. We received the following message back:

Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 553 553 sorry, that domain isn’t in my list of allowed rcpthosts (#5.7.1) (state 14).

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