The State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) is a federal program that provides free, unbiased, and local Medicare counseling. Because beneficiaries often learn about their options from insurance brokers who earn commission from signups, they do not always receive a full picture of how their Medicare decisions can affect them long-term. Although SHIP counselors have been rigorously trained in the ins-and-outs of the Medicare program, they cannot hold a license to sell insurance in order to prevent bias. This session will cover the different parts of Medicare, how your retiree status affects your decision making, what misleading marketing looks like, and how to make a decision that is right for your unique healthcare needs.

This session concerns several lawsuits that resulted from Harper Lee's 2016 termination of The Dramatic Publishing Company’s rights to her great novel and her assignment of rights to Scott Rudin and others. This class will be a lesson on copyright law and an esoteric doctrine called claim preclusion that resulted in one of the cases settling in the fall of 2025.