[Boomer]

wow...

Choice? Choice you say? Well, I guess so, but only within the parameters of take it or leave it. Soooo, by pure definition, that's right, I guess, but.......

When I first heard about what TV was doing, by imposing the limitations of only one insurance choice for Medicare-age residents, I could not believe it. I remember asking some guy in a vendor booth at Brownwood the same question, 3 different ways. Basically, my question was, and still is, "Is this for real?"

There are those who claim to be so in the know about the business plans of TV and have the need, for whatever reason, to cling to their defense, even to the point of condescension, as if those of us who dare to question are pizzants. So let's expand the talk about business plans......pizzant though I may be.......

I always thought the basic business concept of TV was to build a place where regular people could have a very nice lifestyle in retirement. Obviously, that concept has been successful, even beyond what could have been imagined in the beginning.

But.......among those retirees who chose to buy in TV, there are many who have retired from the military or from state or federal or municipal jobs or big corporations -- jobs that provided reasonably priced or no-cost health insurance for retirees. Those people worked for a lot of years for good retiree benefits and planned their retirement budgets with the knowledge that healthcare costs were covered.

I feel pretty certain that none of those retirees, who helped to build TV into a huge success, could ever have imagined that the rug would be pulled out from under them by a business decision that smacks of never enough, never ever enough.........

The convenience, or even the possibility, of accessibility is often a very big deal as we age. Now that Medicare-age Villagers have to scramble for outside doctors or give up excellent insurance, accessibility can become more of a factor, especially considering the lack of publicly available transportation. (Anybody remember house calls?)

I have thought from the beginning that this TV insurance business decision was contradictory to the basic business concept of lifestyle in retirement that I thought was TV. TV has made things hard for a lot of people who bought in and made the place such a big success. I think there are many among us who have a perfect right to their ire.

And now, back to the survey. It will be interesting to see where it goes.


Addendum: There is information out there now that says as of 2020, the Plan F Supplement to Medicare will no longer be available unless you already have it. So there we have another possible factor to consider for those who might have given up that one and could be rethinking.