LANL 2022 Open Enrollment for retirees will take place November 1 to 15 2021. All retirees should receive an open enrollment notice in the mail from Empyrean Customer Care Center for LANL. For Medicare Eligible Retirees there will be an increase in premiums for the vision plan. There will be no changes to the medical, dental, or legal plans.
Log on to www.lanlbenefits.com to review benefits and/or make changes. Elections must be submitted by 11 pm MT on Nov 15, 2021.
All Lab Retirees Must Create a New Account on Empyrean’s Website in August 2021
Empyrean, the benefits administrator for all Lab retirees, is changing their website and will not transfer existing account information to their new system. All retirees must create new accounts. Empyrean has sent two letters about this change, dated July 7, and July 21. This change is happening within a short time. Please keep these letters, so you will know how to set up your new account in August.
If you have not received these two letters, please contact Empyrean right away. Empyrean’s phone number is: 1-844-805-0002, and their hours are: Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Mountain Time.
In addition, Empyrean will soon send another letter that will describe how to set up a new auto-pay arrangement for benefits premiums. According to what we have learned, it is essential that all Lab retirees do this by September 1. Once again, this change is happening within a short time.
Whether we like this or not, we all will need to follow the procedures in the letters to assure that our benefits continue. The benefits involved include health, vision, dental, and legal plans.
Note that pension payments are NOT affected by the changes that Empyrean is now making.
The LRG has restarted our monthly Breakfast Social after a long hiatus (more than 1 year) during the COVID pandemic. All Lab retirees (and potential retirees) who have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19 are invited gather for coffee, conversation, and breakfast.
Breakfasts are held the first Tuesday of each month from 8:30-10:30 am at the Morning Glory Restaurant, 1377 Diamond Dr. (across from the high school). Morning Glory serves a full breakfast and pastries. LRG will pay for coffee or tea.
Our next Breakfast will be July 6th. Come over between 8:30 and 10:30 AM and join the fun!
A number of retirees have received notices from the University of California (UC) about an “Accellion Data Breach”. This seems to most directly affect retirees who receive their pensions from UC. More information is on the UCnet website (ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/ and click on a topic related to “Update”)
What does this notice mean?
If your pension is from UC, your personal information, as well as that of your spouse and survivors, has likely been part of this data breach. The information that was breached may include: name, address, phone number, birth date, Social Security number, and bank account information. This information is exactly what is needed to carry out Identity Theft. UC believes that the everyone in the UC community (Staff, Students, Retirees, and affiliates) may be affected, and it may be difficult, or impossible, to identify each person who has had their information breached. In addition to UC, about 100 other organizations have been affected by a similar vulnerability.
As far as we know now, the personal information of non-UC retirees (CalPERS, and LANS/Triad) is not part of this data breach. Nevertheless, research is continuing and more people may be found to be affected. Continue reading
LRG seeks new editor for “The Main Gate” newsletter.
The March issue of LRG’s “The Main Gate” will be the last for our current editor, Joyce Wolff. We are urgently looking for someone to carry on with editing of the newsletter. Ideally, a prospective editor would be alert to subjects of interest to retirees, and be interested in pursuing these topics with interviews, photos, etc. Also ideally, they would enjoy writing, and have reasonable familiarity with word processing software on a pc or Mac.
How the Main Gate is prepared
The Main Gate is published three times a year, in March, July and November.
A typical issue has ten pages, though some recent issues have had 12 pages, with articles on particularly interesting topics.