A few questions about the State Health Plan wellness initiative from university faculty

Bruce McKinney, who has an actual PhD from an accredited university, represents more than 500 faculty members at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Faculty across the state have been wondering what evidence supports the intrusive wellness initiatives advanced by the State Health Plan. Sen. Dan Blue and Rep. Hugh Holliman chair the committee that oversees the State Health Plan. So far, McKinney has not recieved a response for the faculty. So I’ll post the email here:

Dear Senator Blue and Representative Holliman:

I have been trying to get answers about the Smoking Cessation Initiative for faculty at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. As Faculty Senate President, I am their representative on this issue, and I thought getting some simple answers about this program would be easy. When I first tried to get answers last Fall Senator Rand’s office told me to contact the State Health Plan. The State Health Plan told me to contact Senator Rand, but by then he had left the General Assembly. I then tried contacting the new co-chairs of the Senate Health Committee (Mr. Bingham and Mr. Purcell), but they have not responded to my e-mail. It’s getting a little frustrating. I was given your names as maybe someone who could finally answer some of the below questions, so I decided to give it another try. These are my questions:

1. What research supports the belief that these initiatives will be cost effective?

2. How will privacy be respected? How will the testing be done?

3. Why do the initiatives penalize whole families by moving them to the 70/30 coverage if the
primary care giver smokes or is above the stated BMI?

4. What published research demonstrates that these types of initiatives have been successful in other states?

5. What is being done to assess the reliability and validity of the measures used to determine if a person is smoking?

Any answers would be most appreciated.

Sincerely,

Bruce McKinney

Dr. McKinney, and all state employees, deserves a response.