Benefits navigation

HICAP, free Medicare counselling

Free, unbiased, one to one counselling about Medicare from trained counsellors who are not paid on commission and do not sell insurance. They help compare plans, appeal a denial, sort out billing, and apply for the programmes that reduce Medicare costs. This is the single most useful phone call available to most Medicare households, and almost nobody knows it exists.

Administered by California Department of Aging. Details read from California Department of Aging and checked 2026-07-29.

How to apply

Call 1-800-434-0222 to be connected to the HICAP counsellor for your county. It is free and they do not sell anything.

Open the official page Call 1-800-434-0222

We are not this agency and we cannot apply on anybody's behalf. Applying is free, and no one needs to pay a third party to do it.

What we screen on

These are the rules the checker actually uses. Every one carries the source it was read from and the date it was read, so you can check us.

What we will not tell you

We will not tell you that you qualify for this, because that is the agency's decision and not ours. We screen against the rules above, we show which ones we could check, and we say plainly when a rule exists that we do not hold.

Check this household against every programme