Suddenly out of a job when Time Warner Cable downsized its Lincoln office last November, Dick Bates, 61, took stock of his situation.

His wife, Mary, worked part time for Lincoln Public Schools.

Could they survive on her income alone?

“We sat down, and the only thing that really was going to kill us was medical,” said Dick, a former Time Warner operations manager.

They couldn’t cover the health care premiums.

Time Warner had provided a reasonable severance package, he said,  but it excluded health care. He’d built up a decent 401K — at least before Wall Street stumbled — and he had a small pension from companies Time Warner had absorbed.

The deal breaker was the $1,400 per month in health care premiums to cover the couple and their two college-age sons. As a Time Warner employee, that same insurance had cost him just $230 per month.

He looked around for another job, but there was nothing available for an out-of-work cable television manager with a 40-year-old college degree in journalism and an aorta clad in surgical retreads.

The aorta is the main hose coming out of the heart and, 15 years ago, it formed a dangerous bulge, like a tire about to blow. He had another big bulge in 2002.

Under Time Warner’s insurance plan, Bates paid just $200 out of pocket on a $250,000 medical bill for the first repair. He knows even a minor procedure would cost him more out of pocket today.

Bates said he was seriously considering applying for the cliché job of last resort cited by retiring men — that of Wal-Mart greeter.

Instead, Mary, 54, went to work for LPS full time. The couple is now covered by the district’s insurance.

In December, Dick will get his first Social Security check. That will make it all work.

“I hadn’t planned at 62 to be on Social Security,” he says, “but thank God it was there.”

He can apply for Medicare when he turns 65.

Meanwhile, he said, they should be fine.

Just so long as nothing happens to Mary or her job.