Welcome to the McDonalds of Health Care!

Today I realized that my HMO (or at least the "Physician's Group" who approves my referrals, and the health care group I have to go through to get referrals ...) has less in common with McDonalds than I had previously believed possible. My health care system, after all, is so "fast-food," it's unbelievable that they don't offer a drive-through ... yet; however, it turns out that I was wrong. It turns out that there are glaring differences.

1) Most of the time, major fast food chains at least attempt - to appear - to provide service with a smile. Although my health care group may hire a few rare employees who dare to be different, it seems that as a whole, they provide service with a can't-miss motto of, "You need health care. We don't need you. You bought the HMO plan --- now suck it. Suck it hard!* Service with a smile? There's a McDonalds down the street. Now get going!" I get all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.

2) Fast food only appears to take forever at the least convenient times. My health group has "forever" down pat. 24/7 they never seem to fail to find the longest possible connection between you and your solution.

3) Fast food doesn't pretend that it's good for your health.

On the other hand, neither fast food nor my health care system always gives you what you paid for. On occasion, they do, but other times you're like, "I would never do that to my body!"

This can be as simple as unintentionally receiving the new Angus burger, or as complicated as my phone message requesting a referral to a sleep disorder clinic - returned days later - as "You got off the sleeping pills, but you'd like a refill now, right?" ("What!?!") And I'm thinking, "'Ref' probably means referral - not refill. Hey! Wait a minute - don't you work at the burger place down the street?"

Finally, if I was mad at McDonald's, I wouldn't be afraid to mention them in my blog - truncating my writing, and cowering as I go - for fear that my sleep clinic referral will be rejected, and my dermatology referral lost. Not so with the Greater (bleep) Group ; )

They scare me. As such, they are being discussed, in broad stokes --- as just one more sad failure of the HMO system.

~Mo-joy




* Chelsea Handler could probably trademark this phrase. ; )

Privacy? Ha! My Space Stats / Tracking Code

I wanted some vague sense of privacy on MySpace (possibly Facebook) - to know who was visiting my page, etc... So I Googled "track MySpace visitors" and signed up for some appropriate software --- only to find out that it might cost me a decent amount of the privacy I had left.

Right Now, I am trying to sign up for some MySpace stats / tracking code --- for the third time. I've still had no success, but I am pretty sure that the privacy I was trying to protect will likely be violated because I gave out personal information to these three companies.

I didn't expect miracles (I knew these companies made money ... somehow), but I did expect something in exchange for my information, and didn't even get that.

The current company from whom I am trying to obtain tracking code is http://www.whosonmyspace.com/

This is the third company I tried. I was following what appeared to be the list on http://www.tracemyspace.com/profile-track.htm for recommendations. It didn't go so well.

The first company (http://www.myspacetops.com/) offers a "Real Free Myspace Tracker" in their title, but, um ... doesn't appear to do that in reality. I gave them all of my information, on a page that says, "Trust us!" then, ignored the red flags, waited for my password, and logged in to find out the whole story.

In order to "Get a WORKING Myspace Tracker!" I had two options: I could make a "One time donation" of $10 (perhaps they don't understand that "donations" aren't required ... particularly when a product is "free") or enter a promotion code. Now they have a lot of information, and I have ... nada.

After I checked out some of the other tracemyspace.com sites, I realized that this list wasn't probably a great guide for me (obviously!), and went to http://www.trackerlicious.com (I found it independently - but it is on the more questionable part of the tracemyspace.com list).

I input my data at http://www.trackerlicious.com over and over, and, basically, nothing happened (except ... they collected my data).

Finally - in this exercise in profound stupidity - I found Whosonmyspace.com. At this point, I gave up on scrutinizing the Terms of Service (although it was so short that the "red flags" were flying high) and couldn't find any kind of link to a privacy policy (which is probably illegal for a company that caters to residents of CA) ...

I signed up, then even "activated" my "free" account (big joke).

In order to activate a free account with whosonmyspace.com, you appear to be required to pre-register on peeps.com. But apparently, it's okay they never mentioned this in advance 'cuz it, "takes less than 10 seconds!"

(http://mo-joy.blogspot.com/2008/06/privacy-ha-my-space-stats-tracking.html)

So, I click on the peeps.com link, and...How nice of them! All of my personal information is transferred over (name, date of birth, email, country, zip and gender --- they got that wrong, great ; ) I can't wait for the Viagra ads. Ugh!).

Apparently, this is a great opportunity for me, though... because, Peeps is "Hittin the web SUMMER 2008!" and I don't have to "Miss Out!" because I will be on "the Pre-Launch VIP Guestlist ...VIP Spots remaining: 496,453." So I register... anyway...

I go back to http://www.whosonmyspace.com to get my code (this is actually the second try on this site) ... but nothing has happened. I have no code, and essentially no Privacy or dignity left.

I click on "Contact / Need Help?" and find out that I would, apparently, have to give this awful company even more information to get what I thought I had - now - "purchased" (with the information I just gave them).

It says "Can't get the code to work? Having problems getting it up? Have another bug to report or have comments or feedback? Feel free to message one of us on AIM with your Whos on Myspace username and your Myspace url and I'll get back to you!" There are four AOL-related links, and a broken link to an "online detector."

I would have a minuscule amount of hope that I could (at least) ask for compliance with laws and/or ISP regulations, but then I look up the domain registrant information. In case you, too, have had problems with this company, here is the domain contact information for whosonmyspace.com:

Registrant Contact:
Anunet Pvt Ltd
Jyoti Mehta anunetpvt@gmail.com
+91-11-5592791 fax: +1
C4A-40C, Janak Pur
New Delhi Delhi 110058
in

If anyone finds a great MySpace Stats company, please let me know...
; )