Unlike last week, this week was only wet intermittently. Mind you, when it rained, it rained hard – on Friday night and Saturday we had about 1¼inches. However, TJ and his crew have carried on with the preparations for pouring the lower floor slab. The earth in the area where the concrete will be poured has been stamped down, a layer of plastic waterproofing has been laid over a gravel scree, and all is now weighted down with metal reinforcing bars. There are various deliberate lumps and bumps (such as a pit in the centre where our elevator shaft will be). Now all we need is a thumbs up from the building inspector on Monday and a stretch of dry weather for the pour. The forecast is good – dry weather expected all week. So fingers crossed.
Meanwhile things have been progressing on other fronts. Following a meeting with Monique from Blue Moose Elevators, we have ordered the elevator. We are waiting on competing quotes before deciding on the window supplier. TJ has laid fine gravel down on the roadway to the building site, and for the very first time we have driven down there in an ordinary car. Eventually it will be a tarmac drive, but gravel will do for now. Lisa’s efforts have found us a cheapish supply of a quality hardwood called Ipe for the decking on the back of the house.
Insured at last (we hope)
On the health insurance front, a big breakthrough. We had been given encouraging advice about Medicare (the government backed health insurance scheme) by the US Embassy in London, but when we got here we found that they were misadvised. And the whole medical insurance market was in turmoil with the impending launch of the Affordable Health Care Act (= “Obamacare”). Some aspects of USA health care in the past are positive, even if some of the results don’t stack up as well as should be expected from the money spent. However, the idea of extending health insurance to the 15% of the nation who have no cover doesn’t seem a revolutionary concept. Nor does reigning in some of the bad previous practices of health insurance by setting a few minimum standards seem a staggering reduction in personal liberty.
However, one fallout is that the very expensive and restrictive personal health insurance I took out only a couple of months back is now being taken off the market. I was notified that the insurers were closing down their business because they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) meet the minimum standards now required by Obamacare. The government backed website should provide a marketplace to find a suitable health insurance policy, but just was not working until very recently – there cannot be much argument that could have been implemented in a more efficient manner. It’s not for me to judge if this is plain incompetence or something more sinister.
But things have turned around! The website has been relaunched after a crash project of repairs, and it is working. In the last week, Lisa has managed to find and arrange healthcare policies for both of us which does not have all the restrictions of our old policies and cost a lot less than we had feared. Now we have to wait for the paperwork to arrive.
All in all, Obamacare is a good idea but was very poorly implemented. Of course, this does not start to address the fragmented medical marketplace in USA and I am sure that there will be plenty more unexpected consequences of reorganisation. But I am starting to think that the expectations of the many commentators of a massive swing to tea party policies because of Obamacare at the next elections will not be realised.
Word continues to spread about the neighbourhood about the bird feeder. Along with the normal chickadees, titmice and nuthatches, we are seeing other new species, some not even identified in our (admittedly limited) bird book. The nocturnal visits by a flying squirrel have been supplemented by another visitor – a racoon. This is a much larger animal, like a large cat or small dog. It had climbed the twenty foot high posts supporting the deck, and scuttled away back down the post when disturbed. No something to be encouraged, really – racoons are known to carry rabies.
Robin’s Opinions of America
Continuing my weekly Likes and Dislikes section , here’s my personally opinionated thoughts for this week on life in USA.
Likes
Wines from Georgia
What is not to like about wines from Georgia? Since some of the local laws were changed to make things easier for small producers, the industry has grown and some (admittedly not all) high quality wines are emerging.
There is no international distribution of these wines. Patrons in the State consume them all. There is not even distribution to other States in USA. So, you need to come here to taste them – I recommend that you do!
Dislikes
Blue Laws
Blue Laws is a general description to a myriad of rules and regulations to control the distribution and sale of wine and other alcoholic drinks. USA has had an ambivalent attitude towards the demon drink, which reached a high point in 1920 when Prohibition meant a ban on alcohol sales. There were miscellaneous exemptions – kosher and communion wines were OK, as was alcohol as a tonic if you could get a prescription from your doctor. Home winemaking also became common. Some vineyards turned over to selling juice or dried grapes (often with warnings “adding water, sugar and yeast can cause fermentation”). Others resorted to bootlegged alcohol. Prohibition lasted only 13 years.
But abolishing Prohibition did not mean a free trade in wine. Oh, no, there were all sorts of restrictions put in place. Some were based on using complex local legislation to circumvent federal law (a well-established technique in USA) with the object of enforcing alcohol bans by roundabout means. In some instances, individual states established a state-wide monopoly on the sale of alcohol – a nice revenue raiser. And where the alcohol trade had fallen into the hands of large private companies, the same companies had a vested interest in raising the barriers to new entrants to protect their marketplace.
So, now there remains a complex spiderweb of regulations restricting the free trade between States that is a cornerstone of US success. I can order wine on the Internet, but only from suppliers in certain States, and then only if they have obtained a licence from Georgia. In some cases, I can order wine only if I am physically present at a winery and have it shipped to me in Georgia. Or a supplier can ship only wines for personal consumption from USA across as State line. And it works the other way – wineries in Georgia can ship their products to selected States, and even only to specific cities in other States. Please don’t ask me to justify it all, I can’t. But it does seem to be typical of a grand American tradition – if you don’t like a law, try to pass another law to cripple the provisions of the one you don’t like.
Please feel free to let me know of your own feelings about America – maybe this will be a place to give you my take on them!
Come back next week and find out if the concrete has been poured and if we are ready for the Christmas break.