Eligible faculty and staff have the opportunity every May to enroll, change or cancel their health or dental-only plans with no pre-existing condition exclusions. Changes made during this year's open enrollment will be effective from July 1 through June 30, 2005.

The open-enrollment period ends June 1.

The Office of Human Resources has announced that during fiscal year 2005:

• there will be no reduction in health benefits for active employees;

• there will be an improvement in the preventive benefits under the Blue Cross Alliance Choice plans; and

• the Blue Cross Alliance plans will be eliminated.

In the first week of May, health open-enrollment brochures were sent to campus boxes of active employees and the home addresses of retired and disabled employees.

For those employees who wish to continue their current health or dental-only plan and coverage level, and for those Blue Cross Alliance members who wish to be transferred to the respective Alliance Choice plan and coverage level, no enrollment action is required.

However, for those employees who wish to enroll, change or cancel their health plan, information is available via:

• the open-enrollment brochure;

• human resources' Web site, hr.wustl.edu;

• the health carriers' Web sites; and

• the human resources and benefits offices.

"Remember, we are all health-care consumers, and our actions to help control costs will potentially impact our future premium increases," said Thomas W. Lauman, director of benefits.