Can I help my grandparent apply for the extra help with prescription drug costs?

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Interviewer: I'll be visiting my grandparents soon. Can I help my grandparent apply for the extra help with prescription drug costs?

Ken Hess: I just had a lady talk to me at a senior health fair who said, "Do you realize that there are people out there who have not applied for their help in paying for their prescription drug expenses?" She ended up helping an elderly relative who was just barely making it, and this lady really needed the extra help that she was going to get in paying for the prescription drug coverage instead of having to pay that premium on her own. Well, if the client is not able to apply then a relative or a friend or a government official can apply for the extra help program.

In the extra help program we have a paper application form. We try to send a lot of these out to clients that we think might be eligible, plus you can go right to our website at http://www.socialsecurity.gov and there the "extra help" is very prominent. You just click on that and go through the application for someone. But, it doesn't cost anything to apply so it would be very helpful to the people that you know and love that if you kind of walk them through applying and see if they can get any extra help paying their prescription premium, and the coverage of the deductibles for the Medicare prescription drug coverage expense.