Thousands of self-service “robo-doctor” kiosks are currently being installed inside Wal-Marts across America which collect personal information and promote Obamacare through a health screening loaded with advertisements.
The SoloHealth Station asks users personal health questions and for their contact information which is then forwarded to a local Obamacare navigator.
Users are prompted for their date of birth, the number of vegetables they eat in a day and to describe how often their families use social media, amongst other things.
During the health screening, the machine displays advertisements targeted at the user based on the answers provided.
“Users enter their age, gender and ethnicity and during the screening process they are asked a series of lifestyle and behavioral questions,” a SoloHealth video for advertisers states. “This approach allows hyper-targeting of your messages [advertisements.]”
Some of the advertisements are for over-the-counter medications such as Prilosec and Zyrtec and the kiosk will likely push even more medications in the future.
“It is clear there are now many interactive mechanisms that can step the consumer through the process of self-diagnosis and medication selection,” said Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at a public hearing in 2012.
After the screening, users can then search for a primary care doctor by their zip code.
Interestingly, when Infowars Nightly News host Jakari Jackson searched for a doctor using heavily-populated zip codes, no doctors were found.
These machines appear to be more effective at getting people enrolled in Obamacare than they are at actually helping people find doctors.
They also have potential privacy risks, according to Consumers Union Senior Attorney Mark Savage.
“You have a situation where a patient is voluntarily disclosing information, which means there is no privacy protection, generally,” he said to bioethics.net. ”They may not know if the information is being kept and might be used weeks or years after.”
Solohealth’s Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Kendig even stated that the company is not bound to the privacy provisions under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
The contact information collected from these machines could be used by navigators to enroll as many Americans into Obamacare as possible.
By Kit Daniels
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