We (DW and I) have actually spent a fair amount of time considering the same questions which you raise. Last summer, DW's prognosis after a catastrophic fall was walker for life, probably needing assisted living. We started looking at CCRCs and had more or less decided that was the route which needed to take.
We came down to TV in November to (1) visit a friend who lives here and (2) look at Freedom Pointe. on the way down, we had spent 3 days looking at CCRCs in the Durham, NC area. We realized that we were 15+ years younger than the other residents of almost every CCRC that we looked at. Betsy looked at me and said, "let's look at some houses". We ended up buying about a week later.
What made us choose TV? well, we looked at the number of home health care agencies. Also looked at the number of assisted living and nursing homes in the area (which is considerable). Looked at medical resources within 3 hours of here.
Without kids or living siblings, there isn't a "home" to go back to. We came here because (unlike the CCRCs), we saw happy, smiling people who were busy living and doing. Decided that we might as well live until we die. We have made some plans for the future and need to make more. Because of our circumstances, we will be retaining a CPA to manage our financial affairs when we become unable to do so. If we need assisted living or nursing home, we'll pick one out.
Oh yeah, Betsy's recovery is almost complete, amazing her doctors (who thought she would be permanently disabled). While she will always have some limitations from her injuries, she's back to about 95% of her old self and hasn't needed her walker since early January.
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