Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

The blogosphere is outraged SICKO: Over the WRONG Google Health issue.

While Google warns health care industry beware Michael Moore, U.S. health care consumers themselves ought to be wary Google, Google Health that is, under the direction of Google Health architect, Adam Bosworth.

YES, the Google Health Advertising Blog is pushing Google AdWords to medical advertisers as an antidote to Michael Moore’s critique. BUT, contrary to conventional widsom, Google is not acting as a disinterested media company cum ad agency cum PR consultancy AND Google was not innocently blind sided by a wet behind the ears mid-level staffer.

The Google Health Advertising blogger, Lauren Turner, who is indicated as having penned the original “Does negative press make you Sicko,” took the fall for Google in a subsequent not quite retraction post.

Did Google OK the original post, or not? Regardless, the supposed correction does not materially differ from the original incendiary “indictment” against Moore’s indictment.

Michael Arrington is convinced though that Google, the corporation, did not have a hand in Turner’s first power to the health care industry post. What’s more, he claims to know how Google, the corporation, really feels about the health care industry, Michael Moore and Sicko:

There is no way anyone who’s blogged or worked in PR for more than, say, a week would post something like that on a corporate blog. Millions of Americans have a serious problem with the way health care is handled in this country, and such a polarized topic is hardly one in which a company like Google wants to take a stand. And if they did take a stand, it would be with Moore.

REALLY? Google only takes public policy stands which benefit Google, the corporation:

Workers’ rights? The right for Google to employ foreign rocket scientists at will.

Censorship? The right for Google to sell AdWords unimpeded around the world.

Health Care? The right for Google to house the personal electonic medical records of U.S. residents.

AND, Google IS taking a Health care stand, big time, politically and multi-billion dollar business wise.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt personally welcomed presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton to the Googleplex in February. Clinton made her presidential case before an audience of Googlers, after she met privately with the inner circle of top Googlers.

The Schmidt led Q & A offered presidential candidate Clinton an opportunity to present her stands on major election issues, such as Iraq, the environment…

Schmidt concluded the chat by offering Senator Clinton an opportunity to also present her stands on major issues of concern to Google, such as Google’s medical push.

Schmidt set-up to Clinton:

These are the people that make Google a success. You are a Google user. How can Google help your vision happen?

Clinton return volley:

When Eric was showing me around, we stopped at the Google Health team office, we can not get to Universal Health Care coverage unless we have a much better information base that is very reliable that people can turn to make decisions on their own, to be empowered as consumers of health care, that is something I know you are working on and we really need you to be aggressively pursuing that.

We do need more Information Technology generally in health care, if you’ve gone to a new doctor, they probably took a new history on paper, they probably don’t have electronic medical records, if you go to a doctor out of state, they’ll have to do it all over again, because they probably can’t transfer what you have at your doctor.

The health sector is woefully deficient in Information Technology, any way you can help us move our health sector into the 21st century will help us to get a base of information on which we can make better decisions to provide health care for everybody.

Sound familiar to the December 2006 “Connecting Americans to Their Health Care: Empowered Consumers, Personal Health Records and Emerging Technologies” speech of Google Vice President Adam Bosworth, head of the Google Health team? INTIMATELY!

What’s more, Bosworth has been on a cross-country “sponsored (financed) by Google” road show evangelizing a Google ten year medical plan for the United States!

In Google Health: Lambast Doctors, Sell Medical Ads, I present and analyze what Google aims to do about what it claims is a sad state of U.S. health affairs.

Google is on a big medical mission, and it is attacking on all (opposing) cylinders: 1) Consumer Health Care Advocacy AND 2) Corporate Health Care Advertising Sales.

What is the ultimate Google end-game? Nothing short of becoming the one-stop, defacto, go-to destination and repository for ALL the personal, private medical information of ALL the nation’s residents, as a start.

PLUS, sell all the world’s health care advertising.

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN