With a contentious midterm election just around the corner, the Obama administration is continuing to tout what health reform will mean for Americans -- even turning the president into an online pitchman for the administration's new health coverage website, healthcare.gov...

Other commercial Web sites -- such as ehealthinsurance.com -- have offered online information about health plans before. In fact, according to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 27 percent of American adults have gone online to search for information on health insurance...

Susannah Fox, the associate director of digital strategy at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said she particularly noticed the user feedback button placed prominently on the site, inviting comments from visitors. Fox studies the way that people use the Internet to access health information -- she co-authored the study mentioned above. She says that one major change over the past several years is that people are using the Internet less like an "information vending machine" where they plug in a question and get an answer, and more as a place to customize, comment on and share information.

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