From what I've read, that's the sweet spot
@mumto3girls....living in a semi-suburban/rural area with a city within an hour or so in case you need specialists...etc. I'm guessing Ms. Retton didn't understand how the subsidies work at all.
In the early retirement world (which DH and I are preparing to enter in the next few years), a common strategy for retirees under 65 is to use cash and taxable accounts to keep their MAGI (modified adjusted gross income) very low, in order to qualify for big subsidies on the ACA. I'm saying this is the way it should be, but the exchanges are based on income, and it's perfectly legal. There have been a series of articles in the WSJ on..."what it's like to retire with 1 million dollars..."..etc. To date they've done, "less than a million", one million, two million and five million. They're currently running one on "what it's like to retire with no savings" (hint...you don't want to be in that group). Anyway, in the Five Million dollar club was a couple from NC. They had a net worth north of 5 million. They were 60 years old and paying less than $1,000 per month for a platinum plan. He estimated they were saving 18K a year out of pocket by using this strategy. I think that's about right on the money, as DH and I have priced platinum plans for the two of us and they come in around $2,500 a month.
Hopefully Ms. Retton will do the research. She'd be a perfect spokesperson for say...Blue Cross/Blue Shield....they'd probably throw in a platinum policy as part of her compensation.