Some musings on the healthcare debate

I used to joke, before we moved here, that we’d probably end up moving back to the UK because of healthcare. One year on, the joke has become reality. I’m embarrassed to admit that I really did not do my homework on this subject, and I had no idea just how expensive health insurance would be.

Turns out that a family of four has an average health insurance premium of $13,000 every year! That’s over $1083 or £645 a month. I had imagined that we’d be paying an annual premium that was more in line with the monthly premium, with no idea that we’d be paying the equivalent of a second mortgage payment each month for health insurance. Those of you that know me well, know that I probably don't spend more on health care for our family in any given year than we'd be asked for a monthly premium.

Just to put things in perspective: We insure our house for $300,000 replacement costs. The annual premium for that is some $800. So we would be asked to pay that and more each month times for health coverage. Premiums, on this basis, would get us $3.6 million cover in any given year. (I’m sure there is some reason you can’t compare health care with house building, but you follow….) Only most health care policies have a lifetime payout limit of $2 million, so if your catastrophic diagnosis requires more than that, well, you can just sell your house to pay for the excess.

Moreover, most policies do not cover healthcare in full. There is not only a deductible, so you pay the first $X of any claim, but there are also these things called co-pays, where, you, the insured, pay not only for the premium, but also for part of the cost of care. If my aunt wants to visit a doctor, she has to pay $20 direct, $50 for a specialist. That's in addition to her $500 per month premium.

It all makes perfect sense really, for how else would the insurance companies be able to afford to pay the in-house doctors that have to review every claim in order to second guess your doctor and decide whether the treatment they’ve prescribed should be provided? How else would they be able to pay legions of people to comb your medical records to find pre-existing conditions that render your policy void? (It says here that you had a broken toe that you didn't disclose. I'm sorry, we can't cover your cancer claim.) How could they pay the lawyers to defend the withdrawal of coverage? How could they pay their own executive salaries and bonuses? How could they pay their shareholder dividends?

Apparently over half of all bankruptcies in this country are filed due to health care bills. Seventy five percent of those are filed by people who have health insurance. It’s barbaric.

You may be paying £5/gallon for petrol but thank God you don’t have this debacle with which to contend.

On a lighter note, we've had more snow: 10 inches the end of Oct, and 6 inches yesterday. Here is a photo of our back garden.

And here, one of Spencer on a snow mountain, taken this morning.

Can it be Winter Already?

What a shock to my system a few weeks ago to wake up to three inches of snow on the ground, and a thermometer that read 21 degrees! It's not particulary normal, but not unknown either, and I can recall trick-or-treating in the snow as a child. Alas, the cold has stripped us of most of our autumn colour though, with many trees shedding all of their leaves in one day. In the morning, the ground was white with snow - by afternoon, the snow was completely covered with leaves.

This photo is of cider making. Almost every year, my brothers gather apples from various orchards, gardens and the like, and make apple cider. In the USA, they are inclined to call apple juice "cider".

It all seems a very Heath Robinson affair, with various machines rigged up over the years to automate the process. It started out when my eldest brother inherited an old cider press from some elderly brothers adopted by our family. This year we pressed some 250 gallons!

Here is the press -

And the apples being washed and chopped -


It was all good fun although COLD COLD COLD. The good news is that the 6 gallons or so that I brought home with me have started to ferment nicely and it's lovely stuff.

The really wild west

So I've been doing this work for the Census for just under a month now. It feels MUCH longer....

The census itself takes place next April and, like in the UK, will be carried out by post, but there is a huge amount of preparation that takes place beforehand, and that is what I've been participating in. The team I've been working with is doing spot checks. We are given sections of land to go around, and we are to list any housing units we find therein. Simple enough really.

It's been interesting, as a few of the sections I've been assigned had no housing units a few years ago (if the photos on Google maps are anything to go by), but now are complete subdivisions of towns. Most people are helpful - I've been yelled at by a few too. Those are the urban areas.

Our team was so efficient and finished our area so quickly, that some of us were asked if we would like to help out in Wyoming, where they apparently had difficulty recruiting people. Last weekend then (Labor day weekend - a bank holiday) saw me driving out to Rock Springs. It's in the lower left hand corner of the state. 300 miles from home. They put three of us up in a decent hotel and gave us our assignments. What I didn't understand, and what no one told me, was that there are only three paved roads in the whole of Wyoming! The photo above is the first section of land I was assigned to canvass. It took me several hours to find, as the maps they gave us to locate our areas may have had a single identifier on them. For example, the only identifer on the map for the above area was the California Oregon trail. Where along the trail this tiny bit was located was up to me.

My advice to you all in England is to rush out and buy a good Ordnance survey map and revel in its detail. Linger over the marked paths, the roads, the indications of a school and a pub and a post office. You don't find that kind of detail here - not on a map, and sometimes not on the ground either. This is where I ended up.



For my pains and skills, I have been selected to accompany a bigwig from Washington who wants to come out and observe what we do out here in the field. So later this week I shall collect this man, and head out to Cheyenne. It will be my last assignment. We're going to be doing one urban area and one rural area. Because this is a big deal, I was asked to go out in advance and check out the location. It wouldn't do to be driving around for hours with a man from Washington wondering where the @#%&* some dirt road or other was now would it? I eventually found it. Here is a photo of what we are supposed to traverse.....

I kid you not. Wish me luck!

One Year On....

I woke up last night and realised that I'd missed it. Our moving anniversary. It was 12 months ago yesterday that we arrived on these shores (the fact that we left on the 22nd and had an overnight flight complicates things just a little). Tempus fugit.

It has been flying even faster in the last month or so because it has been stuffed full. We saw Sally taking classroom driving lessons for a week and obtaining her learner's permit before she flew off to England to spend two weeks with her best friend, now in Chalvington, and a few days with school friends in Tonbridge. She returned on the 31st of July with her friend in tow, and the following two weeks were spent taking two girls shopping - oh, and a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, more shopping, inner-tubing down the St Vrain river, more shopping, a trip to the county fair, more shopping, camping in Wyoming, and uh, more shopping.

Somewhere in there I had to obtain my own Colorado driving license, for which I had to take both a written and practical test. What a palaver. I'm happy to report, that I passed, and while I could have legally accompanied Sally during her upcoming driving practice without a Colorado license, she has to record 50 hours of driving time with someone who has a Colorado drivers' license before she can obtain her full license. Interesting rules here which have caught us out a bit: She has to hold her learners' permit for a full 12 months before she can obtain her full license. Once she has the full license, she is still on probation, as it were, as she is not allowed to drive with anyone other than a family member for another length of time. This staged licensing is meant to avoid teen accidents, and I think it's a terrific idea.

When we took Sally's friend back to the airport on the 16th, Andrew accompanied her and is in the UK now - doing I'm not sure what. He had an MRI scheduled at Kings College Hospital, and it was less expensive to fly to the UK to have it done than have it done here - although if the results, which I believe he'll get today - are negative (as in not what we want to hear), I have no idea what will be the next course of action.

As it happens, his timing has been rotten, as I was offered a job working with the US Census just before he left AND the children started school the following day as well. My sister, who lives in Laramie WY volunteered to come and ferry Sally and Spencer to school while I was off being trained to list addresses for the Census. Working for the Feds is as interesting as you could hope. One the one hand, everything is very thorough, repeated many times, every i dotted and t crossed, but within that minutiae are the most preposterous and glaring errors. Moreover we are told one thing one day and another the next. To their credit, on day one, they told us that flexibility was the name of the game. I was told that this job would be 25 hours a week for 12 months, but when I arrived at training they said that come hell or high water, this job had to finish on October 9th. Happily, I'm flexible.

Finally, Sally has started Japanese lessons at the University today. Her school has scheduled a free block of time for her before lunch, and in that time we are able to drive up to Ft Collins, she can attend her class and we can return before her next class starts. It will be interesting. Her books were $180. At least the high school pays for tuition and fees, which would otherwise be in the region of $1000. I think we are going to have to invest in a Prius (which in the USA is pronounced Pree-us - we were all pronouncing it Pry-us) to save on petrol.

Anyway, I've been feeling a bit like Alice's white rabbit with no time to say hello, goodbye. I'm late, I'm late, I'm late, goodbye.

Water

My neighbour, who is the Chairman of our HOA (Homeowners Association) Architectural Control Committee, (more of which in a later post) recently gently enquired of me whether or not I had managed to get my sprinkler system working yet. She had noticed that my lawn was a little brown. A can of worms if there ever was one.

We have a sprinkler system for the garden, and the controls are complicated and digital and I just hadn't had the willpower yet to sit down with the instruction booklet and decide how long, for what days, in what zones, and how many times a day, I wanted to programme the sprinklers to work - QUITE apart from the fact that, having been well and truly indoctrinated by the English to believe that watering a lawn was a sin, accustomed to a brown lawn in summer anyway, and accompanied by my own beliefs that it is a terrible waste of treated water, well, you can see the dilemma. Plus, we've had lots and lots and lots of rain this June, so who needs sprinklers yet?

I'm trying to explain a little of the above to this neighbour, who I suspect might be related to Martha Stewart, so fastidious and accomplished she seems, and she volunteers to 'help' me work the system out. So one Saturday recently, she comes over and we figure out how to run a test programme just to see if the sprinkler heads are all working, and which zones are which. I thank her and subsequently, of course, am obliged to sit down with the instruction booklet and give myself a headache over all my watering options and how to programme the controls. I finally figure it out, and currently water four of my 12 watering zones, for half an hour every forth day, starting at 3:00am and finishing at 5:00am thus providing most of the garden with one inch of water each week, which is the recommended amount (told you it was complicated). I still can't shake the feeling that it is a waste of water to be doing all of this though.

I was horrified to learn, during earlier visits here, that it is illegal to collect rainwater in Colorado. No water butts allowed. Preposterous! Just who says that I cannot collect God's own rainwater? Who thinks they own it? I discover that the legislation stems from water rights which were worked out years ago when Colorado was just being colonised. Farmer's had to fight for water for their crops, and there is much history over what amounts from what rivers go where. (Andrew thinks that we could probably legally collect it by claiming that our water butts are simply very, very large rain gauges.)

When we got our first water bills for this house, I was puzzled to see that we were always charged for 3000 gallons - exactly. I was pretty sure that our water was metered, and know that we couldn't be using 3000 gallons exactly each month. Finally I phoned the city to ask about it, and it turns out that they only bill in 1000 gallon increments! Use 2999 gallons and get billed for 2000 gallons. Use 4001 gallons and get billed for 4000 gallons. Not exactly an incentive to conserve water is it? Then I realise that the charge for 1000 gallons of water is the princely sum of $1.55! That's about a pound sterling for one thousand gallons of treated water! Suddenly, collecting rainwater seems a bit pointless in some ways, and I'm not surprised that no one in this reputedly 'green' area of Northern Colorado has ever bothered to challenge the legislation.

Still, I suffer internal conflict about the whole watering business. I have managed this summer to plant just a very small area of lettuce and herbs, some strawberries, some beans, tomatoes, and squash, and am happy to water them regularly. There are also some ornamental areas of with day lilies, some roses, kniphofia, hardy geraniums, and oenothera. I try to remember that this, as mentioned in an earlier post, is an alpine desert, and that, with an average annual rainfall of just 13 inches, not much will survive without being watered. We are exhorted to ensure that we water trees and shrubs in the winter because there is so little precipitation - I ignored this advice, and have a lot of brown juniper dieback as a result. Moreover this culture is different, and I will have to somehow merge my own beliefs with local customs. Maybe part of it is that a sprinkler system just doesn't gel with my puritanical leanings. It seems so indulgent to have this all automated (so automated that you can incorporate delays for rain - so what am I on about?)

On top of all this, I have discovered that the water is flouridated! AAAaaarrrrrruuuuuggggghhhhhhh.......

Water. Glad to be here? Sad to be here? Unresolved.

The Jordan-Hemming Effect

According to US News and World Report, our very own Loveland, CO is one of the top ten places to live in the USA.
http://www.usnews.com/business/best-places/listing/colorado/loveland

Now they didn't actually interview us for this piece, which surprises me a bit, but there you have it. We move to a place and suddenly, it becomes desirable. There's not much else to say, so this week we will just feature some photos of this mecca.

School's out for Summer

Unbelievable as it may seem to you in Blighty, my children have been on their summer holidays for almost two weeks now. May 29th was their last day and already they are milling listlessly around the house wondering what to do. Even computer games have become boring.

There is some hope. We have a neighbourhood swimming pool - that's Spencer above - and so far that attracts a visit once or twice a day for a splash around. I suspect - when it is warmer (more of which later) - that it will be a useful meeting place for new friends as well.

We also have acquired a ping pong table, and this is providing daily hilarity (we are all rubbish). My mother moved house last month - hence my lack of posting: I have been helping her sort and pack prior to the move, and am helping her sort and unpack following it. The house she left, the same in which I grew up - held some 46 years of accumulated. Including my father's wonderful eccentric collection of everything imaginably useful ever. It also housed the ping pong table. I remember having great fun playing with my siblings in my youth. Latterly it served as a storage table, mounded with boxes and more boxes. It had to go, but I could not bear to let it go, so now it is in our garage. Who'd've thought?

I can recall only one stretch of sustained summer grey growing up. Seems like it was the year I was 9 or 10, and we felt as if the sun would never come out and it would never warm up. Lasted the entire month of June. And guess what. So far this month has been the same, with another week or ten days forecast to come. Of course, it is precisely what we are used to in Leigh, and daily temperatures reach the high 60s and low 70s, so, while I'm not moaning, it puts a small cramp in the summer activities. Andrew is disappointed not to be able to turn on the house air conditioning, (we will never agree on a suitable internal temperature, and I am glad the issue has not yet arisen - watch this space). I have yet to dip my toe in the pool as it is not yet warm enough. There has been much rain, rather too much hail, and all around us we are warned of tornados - one set down in Aurora a few days ago.

Wildlife

The contrast between wildlife in Kent which seemed to consist of cute urban foxes, the odd pheasant in the back garden, deer at the side of the road, hedgehogs ambling into the garden at night, slow worms and dragonflies Bill Oddified into familiarity and wildlife here in the wild west is great.

I have made two visits to this nest of great hooded owls in Longmont, which is in the fork of a willow tree, some seven feet from the ground I suppose, and close enough to touch. The babies are huge now - the size of my cats - still covered in down, and now developing markings. They have learned enough to try to scare us off with an alarmingly loud clicking of their beak. We could just see a furry bunny foot - the remains of lunch I suppose - in the bottom of the nest.

We are exhorted to keep our cats indoors, as the coyotes, raccoons (cute, but vicious animals), & foxes are sure to make a meal of them otherwise. It is a legal requirement to have cats vaccinated against rabies (although I'm not sure how they will be at risk of this indoors).

A neighbour was telling us that a couple of mornings ago they had seen elk by the lake - which, for them is, in essence, across the road.

At any given time you might look up and see some gigantic bird of prey soaring above. We have yet to develop the skills to identify them, although I am assured that there are many bald eagles about. Pelicans and herons abound, and even sea(?)gulls.

There is a Peanuts cartoon of which I am very fond which has the character Sally reading a report on which she has worked reluctantly with much procrastination. The report, about oceans, goes like this: "There are no oceans in Kansas. There are no oceans in Oklahoma. There are no oceans in Colorado. There are no oceans in Nebraska.....
Someone should tell the Colorado seagulls.

Food

Unsurprisingly, food is a big issue in a new country. Several things are just different. Why should butter taste different? The children don't want toast anymore because the butter tastes 'funny'. For that matter, so does the bread (Americans add a lot of sugar/honey/high fructose corn syrup to their bread - even the organic wholemeal stuff). Being electric, we didn't bring over our breadmaker, although, of course, I can still make bread without one. But then, what's the point when butter tastes so funny? There are legions of other foods that are just different. And then there is my quest for local and organic food.

I have finally made a trip to the Whole Foods Supermarket. I'd read about them in the UK, and seemed to remember mostly that they'd been nicknamed 'Whole Wallet" Markets because they were so expensive. Yeah, well, who among us is is surprised that organic food can be more expensive? Our Whole Foods is in neighbouring Fort Collins - about 30 minutes away - and it is amazing. Imagine a completely organic Waitrose and you have the picture. I was flabberghasted at the quantity and quality of the produce along with fish, meat, cheese, bakery and deli counters. Then toss in aisles and aisles of all the other stuff that you get in grocery stores. Just wonderful, and yes, probably more expensive.

I've no great longing to shop there regularly though, as my local grocery store is terrific for organic produce, and I can get just about anything I want. On more than one occasion, strawberries have been on sale, and the organic are offered, side by side, at the same price. (More about food miles later) This week I bought some organic zucchini (courgettes) for 88c/lb. I suppose a quarter of the produce display is organic, and the variety is comparable to the non-organic.

Having conducted my share of workshops on the subject of food miles, I find, none-the-less, that I don't seem to blanch overmuch when I see that the strawberries come from Mexico. That doesn't seem so very far away to me. Have I had an American distance head shift perception change? Probably.

Organic vegetable box schemes as we know them don't exist here. Instead they operate something called Community Supported Agriculture schemes, CSAs. You pay a fee upfront - something in the region of $300-600, and then get a box each week - only during the growing season - of whatever is harvested, and if the harvest is ruined by frost or hail, then there is nothing. I shall investigate further as the growing season approaches.

And we haven't even touched milk, cheese, meat, and dry goods...

The Laundry

Who'd've thought something so mundane would feature as a transition topic? I mean, if I'd moved to a third world country and had no washing machine, maybe one could see it, but it's just silly how different doing the laundry has been here, and how, every week I still feel like I'm embarking on something out of the ordinary. (OK, OK, maybe it just takes me a pathetically long time to get used to things.)

For starters, the washing machine we bought (second hand)- although a perfectly normal American Whirlpool - is GIGANTIC. I have washed my king sized duvet in it with room to spare, and every week I put all the whites for the four of us in and feel guilty because, as often as not, the machine isn't full.

Then there's the water. We live in a mountain desert - it's absurdly arid, but it does snow in the mountains in the winter, and our water source is melted snow. It is very, very soft and a huge contrast to Kent water. I bought a new electric kettle in September. Six months on the interior looks exactly as it did the day we bought it. There are no water deposits. If you leave a glass to drain by the side of the sink, it will dry quickly and spotlessly. What this means in terms of washing is that, in theory, one should need very little in the way of detergent. The bulk of a box of detergent consists of water softeners, which is why you're instructed to add more in hard water areas. I'm told our water is so soft that we really should only need 1/4 cup (2oz) detergent per load. All well and good, but....

....The machine only washes for a scant 8 minutes on a 'normal' cycle, and I find that things I wouldn't have thought twice about in England (most commonly tea slurped down the front of my shirt) don't come clean here! My AEG in the UK used to wash for 25 minutes with it's 'normal' cycle. So I find that if I select a 'heavy duty' cycle that provides an 18 minute wash, and if I spot treat everything, I generally get satisfying results. So why do Europeans get longer washes? I expect the average American would tell you that it's because they're dirtier and don't wash their clothes as often. H'mmmmm.

The worst thing of all is that I don't yet have a clothes line outside (although I do have one in the garage), but I do have a dryer. And so I end up throwing much of the laundry in the dryer, which is energy anathema to me - but I still do it (electric drying makes clothes really soft, and eliminates the need for ironing. {which, those of you who know me well, was never a real worry for me as I used to 'save electricity' by not using my iron}). At least our HOA (Home Owners Association) doesn't forbid hanging laundry out to dry - as apparently many of them do (although a little cursory research tells me that it is illegal for HOAs to prohibit this harmless and ecologically sound practice). Again, it is so dry here that even in the depths of winter you could hang clothes out to dry, and if they didn't freeze, they'd be dry by nightfall. So the acquisition of a clothes line is high on the agenda.

Laundry. Turns out it's on the "Odd To Be Here" list.

Spring Break, Daylight Savings, and Barbie

The children were on "Spring Break" last week. Normally I love school breaks and having them home, but I was anxious this time: worried about how they would occupy themselves in this new place. In the event, the week flew by and we had to arise early again this Monday morning and get them off to school - whereupon I sit here with my normal post break blues. Perhaps that's a good sign. The entire week was fantastically warm, and we managed some gardening and walks. Andrew played some sort of ball every day with Spencer. Sally and I did some shopping and library visiting.

The clocks went forward TWO weeks ago, which is preposterously early. At the end of March that extra hour makes little difference in terms of daylight, but at the beginning, it meant that we were back to waking up in total darkness. Horrid. Now it's just dawn again at 6:30 and tolerable.

I have been visiting my mother and, with the help of a book found in the library, we have been sorting out the Barbie doll collection that my sisters and I played with as children. What good children we were too, as most outfits are complete and in good condition. My grandmother sent us our Barbie Dolls for Christmas in 1961 with a generous set of clothes. Subsequent Christmases saw more clothes and we have 90% of the original vintage wardrobe. It was great fun putting all the outfits and their accessories together, and even more fun seeing, from this book, how much all this stuff is worth. Of course, it's all very well being told that "Friday Date" (the ensembles all have names) is worth $$$, but I know enough not to count my chickens. None-the-less, a conservative totting up put our collection at some $6000.

Global Economy?

One thing that we're having to contend with since moving here is that we cannot get a dollar denominated credit card.  We still have our UK cards, of course, and can use them, but now-a-days, most credit card companies charge a commission on foreign transactions, which I'd rather not pay on top of  this abysmal exchange rate.

So we've applied at various places for a card, but are always turned down.  The reason given? We 'don't have a credit history.' 

Now quite apart from the fact that my nieces - ages 18-24, without a credit history of any kind - are bombarded with pre-approved credit card applications, the credit reference agencies that are confident that we have no credit history are called Experian and Equifax.  That's right, the very same credit reference agencies used in the UK and with whom I have some 27 years of credit history.  Our bank tells us that they could conceivably ask to look at our UK credit history, but they would not be allowed to take it into account when making a decision.   Global economy anyone?

It gets better.  Andrew has had an American Express card since 1973.  He wants a dollar denominated American Express card, but has been refused because, apparently, he has 'no credit history.'

A retailer invited us to apply in-store for their credit card, with the added enticement of a luscious chocolate cake for those making an application.  We told the woman that we knew they wouldn't give us a card.  Apply anyway, she said, you'll get the cake just for applying.   Andrew obliged.  What fun it was when, a couple of weeks later, a rejection letter arrived in the post.  Only this time the reason cited was that 'the applicant was deceased.'   Do you think in this global economy, the US credit reference agency might liaise with our UK insurance company so that we could arrange to collect our life policy?

So this is February

We have had the most tremendous weather recently, and today when I walked Spencer to school, it felt rather as if it was very very early, and therefore still cool, on a summer morning.  

Sunshine is definitely on the Glad to Be Here list.  

Sally and I were talking on the way to school (I take her in the car at 7:15 to her school, which is about 5 miles away, and then walk Spencer to his school, which is about a mile away, at 8am.) and remarking on what a lovely day it was, and how, on balance, we liked being able to see so much sky - it really enabled us to appreciate the clear days.  We both imagined her journey to school from Leigh to Tonbridge, with the roads enclosed on both sides with hedges and trees, the way ahead obscured by twists and turns, the sky most likely grey, and we imagined that there was probably quite a lot of rain and mud, and we both decided that we missed it, but not all that much.  It was the green that we missed, not the grey chill.

In contrast, when we leave our little subdivision, we turn onto a wide four lane road and can see ahead unobstructed for probably 3.5 of the 5 miles it is to her school - the mountains to the west, the sunrise to the east.  

I don't suppose this is usual weather for February - remarkably, I do not remember exactly what it was like here for my first 24 years, but we do not mind it now one little bit.

Out of complacency, into the deep end

Having promised so many of my English friends that I would set up some sort of website to keep in touch round-robin style with what we were up to and how we were getting on, I realised that I had no idea whatsoever how to go about setting up said website.  How hard could it be, though? 

Uh, well, when you're a 50 something techno-peasant, harder than we'd like. 

Still, keeping in mind that one of the reasons for this move was to tumble ourselves out of complacency, out of our comfort zone, provide a challenge, and keep our grey cells active (and yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I wish I knew, too, last summer that the global economic meltdown would have achieved the same thing), why not throw 'learning how to blog' into the mix?  It won't be the first time in my life I've jumped (or been thrown) into the deep end.

For my tuition, I have to thank the wonderful Loveland Public Library which has furnished me with an array of useful books.  One feature I hope to install here (when I'm a bit more fluent with the process) is a Glad To Be Here/Sad To Be Here listing.  American Public Libraries are firmly in the Glad To Be Here camp.

For now, let's get started.    Splash.