Today, you can purchase a Beofung or Woushun handi talkie that can be programmed to not only monitor, but also transmit on most any frequency from 110 Mhz to 480 Mhz, and they even have ones that will operate on 6 meters.

Although your scanners were more than adequate - back in the day, today, technology has advanced to the point of where an analog scanner is almost obsolete. In a few years, the only thing that will still be analog might be the local fire department - since volunteer fire companies cannot afford to buy all new digital radios and supply one to every volunteer fireman. It just makes more sense to just leave it analog for now and let the firemen use programmable scanners to receive their fire calls. And, amateur radio.

The reason for going digital is to fit more information into the same amount of bandwidth. The voice is now second fiddle to the text and data.

Amateur radio - has nothing but bandwidth.
I am very surprised that the US Government has not taken bandwidth away from the amateurs - just due to the fact that it is under utilized.

This is probably the only reason why most amateurs puts up with the prattle of the dead found on most amateur radio repeaters today.

I have 5 transceivers and about the same number of scanners, and yet I hardly ever even turn on my UHF or VHF radios anymore.
It sickens me to listen to what is being said on the repeaters and the intelligence level of amateurs today.

IN my honest opinion, UHF and VHF repeaters are a waste of time and should be outlawed. Most conversations takes place between two LIDS, both are line of sight of each other, yet only owns a handheld and refuses to talk simplex - like the repeater somehow makes their conversation better!