Lets be real on some of the vaccination hesitancy

[Cheezoholic]

Now that the FDA has approved at least the Pfizer vaccine insurance companies butts are covered. One of the biggest road blocks to the private community, especially small businesses, mandating vaccines was their insurance providers not covering them because they would mandate a non FDA approved treatment. When are we as a country going stop letting these multi billion dollar "gamblers" stop dictating the rules of the very game "of risk" they wish to indulge themselves? I wish I could go to Vegas and manipulate the rules of the game of risk of my choosing to only benefit me and not the majority of the players that sweeten the pot. Insurance, like the stock market and the black jack table is gambling pure and simple. Insurance in this country is gambling where the high rollers set the rules. It must stop.

[canetoad]

1. It's gambling in every country

Not just the US. It started in the coffee houses of London, when Lloyds was born, and rich men sought to make even more unearned money by gambling on the probability of a spice-laden ship completing the voyage home to profit from their cargo.

I ran a co-op of small architectural practices for several years. The aim was to purchase and parcel out a group professional indemnity policy; in practice this meant managing the risk to keep the premiums to co-op members low.

Underwriters and actuaries dictate just about everything in our daily lives and commerce although few people realise this. Calculated risk - that's all it is.

[Wounded Bear]

2. I wonder sometimes how much of it is performance art...nt

[Scrivener7]

3. Most of it. Some really are that stupid, but for the rest it's just a very cynical way of

appealing to the stupid ones. Witness the Murdoch empire. Newspapers and "Entertainment" TV Stations parading as news stations all pounding the fears of vaccines 24/7, while all the employees of the Murdoch empire are required to vaccinate and mask at work.

[Bucky]

4. It's not just appealing to reactionary voters. They're raising TONS of MONEY off the vax-haters

They're triggering paranoid delusions to gain power and money -- just like Madison warned us about in the Constitutional debates in the 1780s.

I can't find the quote from the Virginia ratification debate I'm thinking of. But there's a good summary article in the LATimes about the fear of demagogues held by the Framers in general

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-12-26/demagogues-constitution-impeachment-washington-hamilton

[Cheezoholic]

6. I remembered reading this from one of Madisons National Gazette writings

I think it's a good reference into the thinking that was going on during the constitutional debates. At least to the fear of the potential rise of demagoguery via control of information to the people, albeit Hamilton was less concerned about this path of influence I think.....

"The antirepublican party, as it may be called, being the weaker in point of numbers, will be induced by the most obvious motives to strengthen themselves with the men of influence, particularly of moneyed, which is the most active and insinuating influence. It will be equally their true policy to weaken their opponents by reviving exploded parties, and taking advantage of all prejudices, local, political, and occupational, that may prevent or disturb a general coalition of sentiments."

May not be directly relative to my OP but certainly reflects the political environment that enables insurance companies to silently rise behind the scenes to control the the puppet strings of power. My grandfather always told me insurance conglomerates were the most powerful monetary and political entities that you will never see on the planet.

[hardluck]

5. Sorry, I don't understand

Insurance providers for small businesses not covering what?