The Los Alamos Laboratory Retiree Group’s annual meeting will be held on Wednesday May 18 at 2:00pm.  The meeting will be held virtually again this year via Zoom.  If you plan to attend, please send your email address to our President, David Schiferl, at president@lalrg.org.  He will send you the Zoom link prior to the meeting.

The March 2022 Newsletter has been mailed out to all members.   If you are not receiving your newsletters, please contact our Newsletter editor David Janecky at newsletter@lalrg.org.

We are always looking for articles or information pieces that would be of interest to our members.  If you have any ideas or suggestions, or would like to contribute an article, please contact David.  Our next newsletter will be published in July 2022.

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.