Random 5 for November 16, 2025 – Healthcare, news, loss, attitudes, houses

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Healthcare ugh! – We were notified that our local hospital network is dropping our healthcare carrier. Boogers. There are a lot of things I don’t like to waste brain cells on and healthcare is on the list. We had to revisit and spend time selecting something else. There is a slim chance that the negotiations will be resolved before the December 7th deadline, but we couldn’t take that chance. We spent our Thursday night thrashing out options, checking which doctors were covered where and I’ll never get that time back. At the end of it all, we selected something that should work. I always looked at change as exciting. Much of it resulted in better stuff. Not anymore. At best it’s just different, rarely better but we’ll see. Trying to keep an open mind.

Holy guacamole batman! – Just today the hospital took out a full-page ad in the local newspaper to explain why they were dropping the carrier. It wasn’t pretty. Buckle up buttercup, we have a front seat to a fight!

Another look at death – We had lunch with a dear friend who lost her spouse almost a year ago. She is healthy, vibrant and active with an undertone of sadness. She hasn’t made any life altering decisions yet and she doesn’t need to but she’s wondering what she really wants long term. I remember when the spouse of one of my old gym friends died. They were in their mid-80s and spent a lot of time together. I would have described her marriage as happy. After her husband died, she was a new person enjoying a freedom she never experienced. She had gone from her childhood home to her marriage home without the complete freedom of making all her own decisions. She loved that she could eat whatever she wanted without making concessions. Her routine changed. She smiled a lot! I’m sure she mourned her loss, but it was very different and less sad. Different strokes.

Speaking of loss – Last week I lost a classmate and two former work colleagues. That’s a lot for one week. It made me grateful for our good health. It’s not all sad. We will be celebrating my sister-in-law’s 96th birthday next week. Some get to live and some do not. No rhyme or reason.

This is our house but all the houses in the ‘hood look similar with the same brickwork and style.

Whassup in the hood! – Homes in our neighborhood have been selling like hotcakes. Two went on the market this week. Roughly we are a total of about 30 townhouses mostly inhabited by older folks. One is across the street from me. I’ve been in a lot of houses but not in this one. I’m going to the open house today. It’s a larger house (for our hood) but needs a lot of updating. We updated our house. It’s exhausting and expensive.

So how was your week.

56 thoughts on “Random 5 for November 16, 2025 – Healthcare, news, loss, attitudes, houses”

  1. I feel your pain at needing to switch healthcare carriers. There are so many factors to consider and we need to make well informed decisions–not that easy! And I do agree with you about change. The only difference between us, I think, is I don’t think I’ve ever liked change! I’m learning about it now, that’s for sure!!

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    • Change that results from positive things is great — first apartment, first child, first wonderful job (which may not be the first job!). Many other changes foisted upon us are not so wonderful. Healthcare bleah!

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  3. Healthcare is so dang complicated and if you’re not careful you can easily be tricked into coverage you hadn’t intended and wished you had paid more attention. It’s like Chinese water torture. Every year. Argh. Hope your new plan meets all your needs. Good luck.

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  4. Your house looks nice….very neat and tidy. We don’t have healthcare choices here in Canada – everything is covered everywhere although the waits for procedures can sometimes be long. But I would be annoyed it I had to keep changing doctors or hospitals or labs, especially when they know you.

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  5. A very Happy 96th Birthday to your sis-in-law! Hope your visit to the open house was fun and intersting. Homes are selling here in our neighborhood but not at the crazy inflated price after the plague. Lots of out of town buyers from up North buying second homes. The weather is absolutely beautiful here… finally.

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    • The house showed better than the pictures on Zillow. It needs some work but some of the big ticket items like baths and kitchen are in good shape. The kitchen needs new counters but the rest is good. The layout is fabulous. If I were 20 years younger and with unlimited funds, I’d go for it!

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  7. I love that photo of your front door. You have a beautiful house.

    Everyone experiences the death of a spouse in their own way. For me, it was just missing him. When we were married, I was pretty independent, but I miss the companionship of marriage.

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  8. I thought of my grandmother when you mentioned your old gym friend. My grandfather was a miserable old coot and how he and my grandmother ended up together baffles mind. He got pneumonia and went into a step-down type of nursing home until he got better. She went to visit him about a week before Easter. She took him an Easter Lily for his room and was late getting there due to stopping at the florist first. He railed at her for being late, accusing her of running around on him. My grandmother took the flower and just threw it on the floor and turned on her heel and left the room, not even saying “goodbye” (as she recounted to us later). He died that night. After that, she retired the end of the year, came to visit us most every Summer for a few months and really enjoyed her golden years, something that would not have happened if he had lived/returned home. He was older than she was.

    That is a lot of losses in one week. As I am nearing 70, I am hearing more and more people my age are gone or in dire straits medically. There is a Facebook site of all the graduates from every graduating class in our City’s high school. We had a class of 613 and a few a month are dying. I am grateful for my good health as well.

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    • I suspect that he was controlling, maybe not in a mean way but he ran the house. When to get up, when or where to eat. They had a kerfuffle about the will when they were setting it up. They had a lot of money (although you wouldn’t know it they lived so frugally). She wanted to give a sum to each grandchild and he said no, just a three way split for their kids. I don’t think he was dead long before she had changed the will around to her way of thinking. I can’t remember what it was but she wasn’t allowed to make a particular dish that she loved. Technically she could have but would have had to make two meals. She made it every week after he died.

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  12. This was suppose to be a auto renewal year where, if we do nothing, our health insurance continues as usual. Although we expected an increase in premiums, we have discovered a few other “surprises” as we look through the info package.

    Houses in our area stay on the market for a while… the prices are completely nuts.

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  13. Our housing market in the UK has stalled which was one reason we took ours off the market. With the upcoming budget and rumoured plans for new taxes, the property market is in the firing line. It will hit those with properties valued over half a million, but what is unclear is what happens to those below that.
    The Chancellor will lose out on revenue if they are excluded, but for pensioners like us, we are likely to be taxed and penalised on our efforts to make our retirement comfortable. Our property is worth at least £100K less than the national average, and yet still we couldn’t sell it.

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  15. Starting in October the insurance woes hit. The research takes a lot of time, and I’m glad you found one that will work. We have two hospitals, and we had that same issue with one a couple of years back. I’m sorry you saw so much loss this month. As to your description of your friend that is enjoying her freedom, I had to smile. There has been a lot of news around the term, solo ager, which I’ve enjoyed reading about because I have a good friend who was a care giver for a parent, married and then a care giver for her spouse. After she got over the initial grief period, she said it was liberating to just make her own decisions, and as you said eat what she wanted, watch she wanted, go to bed when she wanted, etc. As for real estate, it is nuts up here. The average house price is almost $550,000, and they sell quickly.

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    • I agree with everything you said. AARP has an article in this month’s bulletin about solo agers. As for my liberated friend, she was a caretaker to a man who didn’t listen to doctors for several years. It was frustrating for her. I was stunned at how she reacted to her freedom. Fortunately she was very healthy despite being in her mid-80s and was very active.

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  16. Health insurance has taken over the conversations among my “contemporaries” over the last several years. In our area two big health systems stopped accepting any coverage from Medicare Advantage plans, causing additional turmoil for too many neighbors.

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  18. Wowzers…..that local hospital dropping any healthcare carrier is a BIGGIE and something that can really I’m sure be a pain to “get around” when it’s YOUR carrier! There is only one hospital here and it’s 10 minutes away as are our doctors offices – it’s just convenient and convenient is wonderful when you’re “older” (notice I didn’t say OLD….just older!). I’m happy to hear you have found a “work around” for that situation but I know it wasn’t easy.

    Hugs, Pam

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