What I consider necessary, as I get older, is that there needs to be a high quality and robust healthcare industry, locally. Some - many - small towns just don’t have it.
For instance, a couple of anecdotal examples:
I have a brother who lives in a small town in Texas, barely 15,000 people. Some years back his first wife had to be helicoptered to a metro area medical facility to get the emergency care she needed, and she barely survived that trip.
I thought once of residing in the small Illinois town of Hoopeston (the housing prices are bargains) until I learned that many major medical things require getting down to Chamnaign, Illinois (about an hour away) to get the quality care needed.
There’s lots of good healthcare in and around Indy. Our local hospital, Hendricks Regional, is now part of the Mayo Clinic group. It’s a 5 min drive from our house, and the bigger hospitals in Indy are between 30-50 minutes away.
I hear you on the healthcare thing. We aren’t getting any younger. Staying fit and eating right with daily exercise has helped us ward off most things, but we don’t take our health for granted. One day it will catch up to us.
The healthcare accessibility is one reason we will likely stay put here, and not move back to the south. It would be like starting all over again, and we know firsthand how hard it is to establish yourself in a new area without kids in schools. If it weren’t for church and our neighborhood, we probably wouldn’t know that many people, though we don’t volunteer in the community quite as actively as we used to.
P.S. We used to live in Texas. First in Houston, then later in Arlington. I always felt like it took fifty forevers to get anywhere in Texas, and that was 40 years ago. I can’t imagine what it would be like now.
Our little town may be small, but there are 3 suburbs of Indy within striking distance very quickly. I don’t think it would be but a few minutes of a flight to go from the regional hospital to a bigger one in Indy if a life flight were needed.
You raise a good point. I happen to live in Champaign. It is like other downstate metro areas. The hospital systems are setup to be regional healthcare sites. If you don't live too far out in the sticks, you can get stabilized care before getting shipped off to a regional medical center if necessary. Gibson City has a hospital but if you need to see a specialist, you have to drive to Champaign or Bloomington..