Retirement: For 32 years Mt. San Antonio Gardens has offered unlimited medical benefits—for a price. Senior citizens gladly pay for peace of mind.

POMONA — Dexter and Midge Barrett–he with a partially paralyzed leg, she with a reconstructed heart–fret more about their unruly rose garden and cranky model train set than about the prospect of a Medicare financial squeeze and the murkiness of impending health care reform.

The couple, in their 70s, have a deal at their nonprofit Claremont retirement community: a guarantee that all their basic needs–including 100% of their health care costs–will be taken care of until they die. At the upscale Mt. San Antonio Gardens, the Barretis and 425 other senior citizens have bought themselves the lifelong promise of surgery, medicine, physical therapy, round-the-clock care and a permanent bed in the community’s long-term nursing home, if they ever need it.

“We’d probably be wondering who’s going to take care of us, knowing how expensive it can be if you get a long, lingering terminal illness,” said Dexter Barrett, 76, a retired TWA airline administrator. “But now that we’re here, that worry is off our back.”