Save the Date!  The Laboratory Retiree Group annual meeting will be held in person on Friday May 17th at the Betty Ehart Senior Center (1101 Bathtub Row, Los Alamos, NM).  The meeting will begin at 12:30pm and lunch will be served.  Stay tuned for more details.

Empyrean Customer Care  Center for LANL has been issuing erroneous and conflicting bills to LANL retirees since the beginning of the calendar year.  They are aware of the issues and claim to be working on correcting them.  Retirees should have recently received a letter from Empyrean entitled Important Update: Billing Error Apology and Coverage Assurance.

The LANL: Benefits Office is also aware of the issue.  We received a copy of the following email from them:

This is the message I’ve been conveying to any of the retirees that have contacted me either by phone, email, or through Norm. I am so sorry this is happening to all our retirees.  First and foremost, I want to assure you I will NOT let them cancel anyone over this billing issue. Trust me, we are doing everything in our power to make this right.  Hopefully, you’ll be pleased to know the following steps we are having Empyrean take.

• Insurance Coverage:  Empyrean will be sending a communication to all Direct Bill enrolled retirees, via email and paper, confirming their insurance coverage will remain intact while we work to resolve this matter.  They are partnering with the Los Alamos Benefits Team for this verbiage.  Once the billing issues are resolved, they will provide an additional communication, with approval from the Los Alamos Benefits Team, to Direct Bill participants with information on resolution and next steps.
• Billing Corrections: Empyrean team is working diligently to rectify the billing errors, assuring all accounts are correctly updated and accurate.  An audit is being completed to confirm accounts are correct.
• Billing Subsidies:  Empyrean’s intention is to ensure that retirees do not bear any financial burden resulting from their mistake.  As a gesture of good will, they will be providing a credit to affected retirees for the specific benefits and months that were impacted by the billing errors.  This credit will be applied automatically to the retiree Direct Bill account.    For the retirees that may have paid a fee for a one-time payment over the phone and charged $20 during this issue, we will be crediting their Direct Bill account for the associated fees.
• Communications: As of January 30, 2024, Billing Services has temporarily stopped any Direct Bill communications from mailing other than new Retiree Welcome Packets.   

An apology letter is coming …

** Updated Nov 17 **

If you have not yet participated in this year’s Open Enrollment for retirees, there is still time.  LANL is keeping the retiree Open Enrollment open until November 29.  Note that if you are on the current ARAG legal plan this year and want to continue with legal coverage under the new MetLife plan, you do need to re-enroll.  You will not be switched over automatically. To take advantage of this extension, call or text Konstance Kurrie of LANL HR at 505-695-3707.

Open enrollment this year will be from Monday October 23 to Monday November 6.  Open enrollment materials were mailed to retirees on Friday October 13. No need to do anything if making no changes. However the Lab Legal Plan is going to a MetLife Legal plan and you would need to enroll in that during open enrollment on the website or you can call Empyrean. They are also offering Norton Lifelock for identity theft protection for $15/month fee.

Below is open enrollment material provided by LANL that will be posted on the Empyrean website:.

2024 Medicare Rates         2024 Non-Medicare Rates

2024 Delta Dental Benefits      MetLife Legal Benefits

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