Blue Cross Insurance and/or Manulife?

Pat Bowslaugh, Benefits Chair

RTAM has received several requests for support in dealing with these two Extended Health Insurance providers. Please note that these two carriers are with you from your time as an active teacher and are not under the jurisdiction of RTAM.

Therefore, we are unable to intervene on your behalf.

Here are the contact numbers for each:

Manulife: 1-204-944-8762

Blue Cross: 1-800-873-2583 (During personal contact with Blue Cross it was confirmed that information re premium costs will be available for your Income Tax submission.)

SUN LIFE through MTS:

There are many of us who purchased a Term Life Insurance policy through the Manitoba Teachers’ Society while we were an active teacher. Those policies ended upon you reaching the age of seventy.

Glen Anderson, MTS Staff Officer provided information that those policies were held by Sun Life and timely communication with a Sun Life representative may allow you to continue with a private Sun Life policy without a medical verification. 

Income Disparity . . . continued from page 5

of Scientific American and reported by the Conference Board of Canada, outlines a series of consequences of income disparity. While the focus of the article is on poverty and illness, it can be expanded in scope to apply to the general population. It argues that in the spread of infectious disease in the American urban environment, “the main driver is the country’s ever worsening income disparity.” The article links poor quality housing, inadequate education, failing water and waste management infrastructure (all factors in the spread of disease) to inadequate incomes for lower and middle class workers. One could successfully argue that income disparity, affecting the majority of the population, reduces the tax revenues required to maintain social structures.

Income disparity can be related to crime rates as alluded to in a January 17, 2018 Free Press article. Adequate wages for families could pay for housing, child care spaces and the taxes that provide education and funding for social organizations that might be “key to keeping young people from crime”.

While those with wealth have few constraints on their political participation and influence, those with lower incomes are less able to be involved because they have neither the time nor the money to indulge in what can be recognized as a “rich person’s sport”. This has led to apathy among voters and a downward trend in voter participation by those less affluent.

In conclusion, I submit that the growing income gap is itself a major problem because it concentrates too much wealth in too few hands. Further, this gap contributes to economic and social problems affecting all of society , seniors included. It exacerbates poverty, decreases income security, affects our health and social infrastructure costs, hampers education opportunities, affects crime rates and discourages political participation. If nothing else, a look at income disparity should invite scrutiny, debate, some thought, and direct action to address the issue and related problems. 