Part D plans are all privately offered. The government does not offer a Part D plan like it does Part A and B.

Healthcare is the literal example of inelastic demand my prof used to teach us the concept. If you die without it, then there is no price where a reasonable actor can choose to stop participating in the market.

Kindness has no place on the road. Follow the f$%^*%$ rules to prevent accidents.

Not just the bones of the world, they're older than bones.

I honestly think it's because in measures of distance, a US American could be considered well-traveled without ever having left the United States. Living in DC and visiting Florida or California is a big trip logistically. I love to travel and have moved a LOT and I have just barely been to every state in the US (some I only drove through, fuck rural Nebraska). While I disagree personally, I think that most Americans just don't see the immediate utility in learning other languages.

Not learning Spanish in school as a requirement at this point is just racism, though.

I work for for a health insurance company that tries to be a market disruptor that brings prices down. I vote to put myself out of a job at every opportunity, and realize that if my company goes under my only skills are for evil.

Yeah I'm drunk right now, why do you ask?

Do you just hit an age where you stop being able to comprehend you're out of touch? Is that going to happen to all of us? I feel out of touch all the time already and I'm nowhere near the Congressional average...

Rick Scott is the senator of.... Which state was it again?

I think if the decision had been going forward instead of backward, I would have felt better about it. Saying any descendents born after 2025 will not have assumed citizenship is very different than saying "Lol, your citizenship wasn't real."

Now I feel like the fact that I decided to learn Italian and work out an emigration plan before applying bit me in the ass. I should have started the process 15 years ago when I was as you say.

Thank you for figuring it out, I was stumped.

Powerful lobbies are surpressing the number of doctors practicing in the US. If a foreign doctor wants to emigrate and practice here they cannot until they pass TOEFL (reasonable) AND finish US-based residencies, of which there are few. I know a Russian dermatologist who has been a receptionist for years because she cannot get ECFMG certification. Some states are wising up and waiving the residencies, but way more need to do it.

I've worked for the non-profit insurance subsidiary of a charity hospital system, and part of the problem is that ANY of the competition is for profit. What that means is that the for-profit companies are effectively setting the baseline of coverage. Healthy people (or the HR department at the company) aren't as concerned with richness of benefit as they are with the lowest premium. Sick people, though? They've got a list of doctors and drugs they want to make sure are covered. So if the non-profit benefit is too rich it attracts all the sick people and suddenly the operating costs of the non-profit skyrocket and they go out of business. It's a weird model that can't be AS good as the mission wants to be.

In my case the hospital system actually created a generic drug manufacturer themselves to undercut for-profit drug manufacturers. THAT was less daunting than trying to impact the insurance side any more than they already do.

Woodworking. I want to refinish my dining set and build a Murphy bed in the basement. These things seem well within my theoretical abilities but the tools are expensive and I'm afraid those items will look bad. I put some chair rail up and there's one spot I joined poorly and I can never unsee it.

I am of Italian descent but also Italian-American. Those are different things in my mind. Like, I am learning Italian and learning about Italian culture today (my father and I are trying to get our Italian citizenship although it's a long road). That is separate from the Italian diaspora that my father's family settled into as immigrants in the US. That community has it's own cultural practices and nuances that may be roughly sourced from the same place as my ancestors from Italy, but they aren't the same. I am proud of both, I see no reason to discard the Italian-American label just because Italians might make fun of me. I don't pretend being Italian-American makes me Italian or able to speak for Italians or Italy.

That said, my mother's side of the family is decidedly more WASPy and while I am no less accepting of that heritage, I see no real reason to deliberately celebrate it. It's the dominant "culture" in the US and in no danger of being assimilated away. It may just be that those of us who came from a minority community (no matter how distant that status is from the present) feel driven to protect it on some level.

I have a 23 Mustang Mach E. Due to where I live, I felt AWD was necessary and that limited my EV options substantially (along with all the tax incentive changes happening at the time I ordered it in 2022).

Honestly though, while it's bigger than what I wanted and doesn't have as many manual features as I would prefer, it is a supremely fun vehicle to drive. I wish EV charging infrastructure was better so that taking it on a road trip was more feasible.

I do not understand Amtrak at all. The Keystone has been the absolute best thing about moving back east for me. $25 to Manhattan, grab a bagel, see a show, $25 home. And the Keystone is the crappy commuter train, the Pennsylvanian is way nicer. I've done it tons of times and it's only been late once, and no leaks on the rain.

Getting to DC costs hundreds each way and isn't any faster than driving. I'm better off buying a ticket to Baltimore and then taking the $7 commuter to DC...

It's not subtle. 😂

Mormons read the Bible. They'd be Trek super-fans who think their favorite fic-writer is better than Roddenberry, but they would have watched ToS and NG at least.

Source: raised cultist. Have a Mormon "quad" of all the holy texts somewhere in storage.

I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, but at least in my anecdotal experience women seeking taller men is another symptom of patriarchy being toxic to everybody.

When I was growing up the pressure on women was to be as thin as possible - in essence, take up as little space as possible. I love the body positivity movement for starting to change that mentality but for me the damage was done in my formative years and has never gone away. It has resulted in me being physically uncomfortable if I am the biggest person in the room. The taller/broader a guy, the smaller I am by comparison. It's completely fucked up, I'm quite tall so there are LOTS of incredibly attractive men shorter/thinner than me but I could not have been comfortable dating any of them without a lot of therapy for myself first.

I never put anything like "nobody under 6ft" on a dating profile, though, so maybe I'm off-base.

I think this is just a more common anecdote for older generations. As a child I remember my dad taking me to his old neighborhood in NYC. It must have been over 15 years since he'd been back but all the business owners remembered him and greeted him by name.

I went back as an adult a few years ago and all those shops are gone and the neighborhood is completely gentrified. It's just a different world now.