"I don't want currently-underserved people to get care because that means less care is available for me as a rich person with near-unlimited financial resources" would have made sense (I mean, not really, but at least wrap my head around it lol) if the ACA was about actually nationalizing healthcare to the point you can't use a big pile of money to get better care, but that's never what the ACA was.

I guess there were probably a non-zero number of conservatives that actually thought that though. 🤷‍♂️

That always blew my mind. We had "death panels" before; they're called actuaries and were driven by the profit motive of an insurance company... ❓❓❓

If it was "effortless" everyone would be a landlord?

Other than those who couldn't stomach the ethics of living off the backs of others, I'm sure most would if they could. First you gotta be rich enough to not only be able to afford real estate, but acquire extra real estate you're not even gonna use. That's a very, very small group of exorbitantly wealthy people.

Because they still get paid, just not the landlords, many of whom are small time and own 1 or 2 properties and rely on them for retirement

Realistically, "the banks" probably aren't in the picture anymore for any given landlord, especially ones that have owned their properties for a few years and turned property value increases into rent increases while their actual mortgage stays the same. When wages, credit systems and the housing market are so fundamentally broken only rich white guys over 50 can get mortgages like now, its crazy easy for them to scoop em up and charge whatever they want.

Holding individuals accountable for a mortgage, taxes, repairs, etc on a house, while they receive nothing in return would be about the same thing as what mines did in the 1800's to immigrants

They could always stop being a financial parasite and work for their money instead of trying to suck up a share of other people's through money gravity. Zero sympathy for rentseekers.

The similar vibes between how slaveholders talked about their "freedom" to own slaves and how landlords talk about their "freedom" to extract effortless income from their tenants labor is so creepy.

Realistically, it probably won't -- it'll be up to the businesses/people themselves. That's if they can even get to mandates to begin with; my bro in Texas' employer, a major defense contractor, is still of the "its a HIPPA violation to ask about vaccination status" mindset.

Secessionists said the same thing about slaves.

Dredd Scott has entered the chat

They are saving who money?

They would probably say something like they're "increasing shareholder value by reducing operating costs" if they were questioned about it on an earnings call, and have numbers on hand about how much is being saved on the budget through the lower-tier plan.

Are they not on the same plan paying the same new outrageous out of pocket costs?

Of course not; the ones making those decisions are directors/executives. They give themselves the best plans, but even if they didn't, what is an outrageous out-of-pocket cost to you or I represents pocket change to them. Comparing deductibles and co-pays is kind of a meaningless exercise when one person is a renter making 40k/year and the other makes 200k, has 3 homes and a wealth management portfolio whose value stretches into the millions.

And if they aren't, why is that?

Capitalists gonna capital. Shareholders don't care about the company's insurance plan offerings. They only care about what management is doing to raise the share price that quarter.

Behind The Bastards had a great episode on this last year with respect to Nazi Germany; people who weren't themselves crazy fascist, but enabled it for the sake of being better off than they would be under more equitable systems.

It legit blows my mind how entitled these people are, that they think they have some kind of natural right to force sane people to accommodate their unvaccinated asses.

Its so frustrating how none of this covers the J&J vaccine. Its the only one that was available here early on because of the cold chain problems with the mRNA vaccines. Wish I knew if I should just pretend I'm unvaccinated and try to get a mRNA shot now to stay protected or what. :\

I keep thinking Mrs. Doubtfire.

We don't really have much in the way of left-leaning media in the US. At least not in the corporate space, which is dominated by similarly corporate-oriented liberal centrist types like Maddow -- the independent & podcast world is a bit better with open-source journalism outfits like Bellingcat and people like Robert Evans.

Interesting. Wonder why they can't do that at the pharmacies up here. 🤷‍♂️

Want me some of that mRNA jui️ce.

Edit: Apparently the dry ice supply is the issue, cause there's a lot of places that don't have the freezers to store it in.

In a lot of poorer areas only the J&J is readily available.

Moderna & Pfizer's vaccines have to be kept in high-end freezers that can sustain very low temperatures; a while back there were some groups using fancy ice cream trucks from Massachusets to do mobile clinics with those vaccines, but those were very hard-to-get slots because everyone was afraid of the J&J one at that point.

Yeah, its crazy expensive. I only buy the Liquitex stuff when I've got like enough stackable coupons and vouchers at Michael's to get the price down to like $~50. Even then its still kinda obnoxious.

I've seen other people on youtube using mixtures of PVA glue (like, Elmers' Glue-All) and water, but never tried it myself.

I also get this whenever I use Floetrol (also using liquitex basics); drying seems to, like, desaturate all the colors somehow.

Liquitex's pouring medium doesn't do this at all for me; the colors dry pretty much exactly how they look wet.

Hoping you get some answers, cause Floetrol is way cheaper. XD

Seems like they've already got all the representation. XD

No one's forcing you. If you wanna be unvaccinated, do it up, but please work remote, wear a mask to protect those whose jobs force them to come to your home for deliveries/etc, and stay home far away from public spaces -- you don't know who you interact with that may be in daily contact with kids too young to be vaccinated yet.

Its like you're expecting society to accommodate your decision to be unvaccinated. When you go out in public, you could be a carrier without knowing it yet. Your choice forces risk onto others that we don't want.

> if you have the vaccine good job, sit down and relax, don’t worry about my freedoms and liberties.

Your freedom to endanger the other people you force your unvaccinated presence on out in public without consent? Or your freedom to render hospitals unusable for anyone who isn't a covid case?

> If you really care about people’s lives give everyone life saving medication for free….

Its not like we aren't trying. Centrists and Republicans fight the idea of socialized medicine tooth and nail.

At least in this case and for now because of how serious it is for literally everybody, the life-saving medication _is_ available for free. Hek, we've got a whole bunch of them.

What really gets me are the people who get intubated and come away from it still thinking that a vaccine "isn't for them". 🙄

I definitely think its time we start thinking about this. At least making sure public money doesn't go toward subsidizizing and enabling their unvaccinated-ness by bailing them out on their decision to risk become a carrier. Its their choice at this point, multiple highly effective vaccines are widely available.

An actual instance of those "moral hazards" they always like to talk about when government helps people.

You just described it -- trying to make money by just having a pile of money rather than creating value. To sleep better at night you've probably told yourself this applies only to, say, Wal-mart trying to get preferential tax treatment in a local jurisdiction and living it up at the taxpayer's expense, but creating artificial scarcity in the housing market by acquiring houses you don't need, then taking advantage of it by profiting off it is just another form of it.

Adam Smith understood this even back in the 18th century:

As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the licence to gather them; and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land ….

So you think landowners are all hateful, MAGA boomers, who are slumlords?

Mine certainly always were. Landlords are scum who leverage massive piles of money to take extra properties they don't even intend to live in off the market so they can eternally profit just by sitting on it.

I have zero sympathy for the landlord class.

Are you literally asking what's wrong with rentseeking?

Nicely asking rich people to forego an opportunity to become even more rich. Good luck with that.