Although this news item is lightyears away from the whole health care paradigm, I believe it's worth sharing to give you a clearer look at how the U.S. military plans to step up its information operations and is learning how to fight the war on terrorism electronically by manipulating the flow of information.
The basis for the report is the Information Operations Roadmap, a recently declassified document (free PDF report link below) acquired by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
Part of this "roadmap" is the dissemination of propaganda through various channels, including military briefings with journalists. What should alarm you: An acknowledgment in the document that information intended for foreign audiences as part of the military's psychological operations -- including public diplomacy -- is being reported by the media as news to Americans too.
The American media first became aware of the practice last year when the Pentagon paid a private company to plant news stories supportive of U.S. policies in Iraqi newspapers. Nevertheless, military propaganda still makes it back to America and military analysts say that shouldn't be happening. However, analysts have no clue what those boundaries should be or how to establish them.
Just a reminder, this article did not appear in American newspapers but in the British Broadcasting Corp. Web site, and that current U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed off on it.
BBC News January 27, 2006 Free Full PDF Report