days until our Collective Agreement expires, we are preparing, we are united and we will make change.

Claim Secure: collecting accounts of denied, delayed claims

To our mainline members:
Your Benefits Committee needs some extra support! So I will be assisting them in amassing data to pinpoint the issues that you may be encountering with Claim Secure.
My intent is to put together a fast survey.
To facilitate this, I need your general accounts to quickly hone a specific Q & A so I know exactly where to help your Committee focus its best efforts.
As always, you personally need to pursue the normal channels through Claim Secure to claim and direct your appeals and questions.
In other words, I will NOT be handling individual claims issues, individual grievances or personal account questions about individual benefits.   All of those issues are for your Locals to address, they are there to help with and to file on your behalf if you have exhausted all avenues of inquiries with Claim Secure.
However, if you could please email me your accounts of your frustrations, denials, concerns, partial payments etc over the next month, then your Benefits Committee and I will be able to construct a survey to send you, the mainline membership, in order to garner precise info and stats.
To be clear again, this is NOT to discuss or address coverage of items or services that you think we should be entitled to, a comparison to other unions’ coverage, a comparison to Rouge’s coverage or to amend/increase coverage aspects of our current plan.
Such matters can ONLY be addressed during negotiations.
We can certainly have that conversation at a later date, and I encourage everyone to read the language of the MOA of your newly printed Collective Agreements and specifically, point 8 under the subtitle ‘The 2019-2022 Collective Agreement’; which stipulates some of the conditions of our re-openers.
Rather, this endeavor is to identify and to try and rectify the practical administrative issues you may be encountering with your current provide, such as:
1. length of time of repayment,
2. adjusted amount of coverage,
3. denials of specific brands,
4. reapplication for eligibility issues,
5. insistence on generic versus name brand pharmaceuticals
6. change in coverage specifics.
This exercise on your part will:
1. Enable Component to precisely and immediately name and address your benefit concerns with the Company and
2. Allow our Grievance Committee to have access to crucial data for a policy grievance in a timely fashion, should it be deemed necessary.
Please send your accounts, with copies of denied claims if you are willing to share (denied or partially paid claims make for very helpful and clear evidence) to: beth@accomponent.ca.
To our Rouge members, I have heard of no such similar or consistent complaints about your benefits provider,  but feel free to reach out to me as well if you have concerns or questions. I will direct you to the proper resource to help you deal with the matter.
Let’s start fixing this together!
Feel free to share this with your colleagues to encourage them to send me their accounts.
Cheers and Fly Safe!
In solidarity,

Beth Mahan
Vice-President, Air Canada Component of CUPE