A Privatized Playland in Florida

There is a retirement community in Florida that is home to 93,000 people and is developing its own health insurance plan for residents only. The draw will be eight clinics that promise to have a doctor no more than a ten-minute golf cart ride away. This place is called The Villages, and it’s like the Truman Show. (“Spend 24 hours in the Villages, and all of the state’s problems feel like just that — someone else’s problems. The Villages’ press-averse developer, H. Gary Morse, who would not comment for this story, runs a tight ship: my rental car is photographed whenever I pass through the community’s gates. There’s nary a speck of litter anywhere, and I walk past parked golf carts with cameras in the dashboards, keys in the ignition and golf clubs jutting out the back.”)

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