The State Health Insurance Assistance Program, or SHIP, is a free program that allows those who are on Medicare or other forms of government assistance to understand what their benefits are.

SHIP enables seniors to gain a firm knowledge of their health care choices and also have a means of support in the event that problems arise with their health care coverage.

Benefits and services are available in all 50 states.

The way the program works is that the Shiptalk.org website has a ‘Find A Counselor’ link.  Click on that and input your state and county.

This will pull up the ShipTalk.org counselor in your area.

As an example, where I live in Suffolk County, NY, I pulled the information up and got the following information…

Retired Senior Volunteer Program

JoAnn Gallagher

100 Veterans Memorial Highway

Hauppauge, NY 11788

631-853-6651

Now, when I called…so that I could write this article…I found that these offices are associated with Medicare as well as with your local county Office of the Aging. 

They provide benefit counseling for Medicare to make sure that you are getting the right coverage’s based upon your age and income, as well as seeing if you qualify for Medicare Extra Help.

Overall, this is a government resource that seniors need to be aware of and take advantage of.

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