Workers get skinny on smoking, weight

Some 600,000 state employees, teachers and retirees should have received last week a packet describing the State Health Plan's new Wellness Initiative.

That's the program that says health insurance will be more expensive for smokers and the obese. Plan officials had an Oct. 1 deadline to get some information to members. The initiatives affect some 560,000 members — everyone except for those on Medicare.

The smoking initiative, which would include saliva tests for a sample of members to ensure nonsmokers really don't light up, goes into effect next year. The weight initiative, in which members must have a Body Mass Index lower than 40, ten points higher than the "obese" threshold, takes effect in 2011.

For both programs, trying to quit or to lose weight is enough to qualify participants for the cheaper insurance plan.

"What we know from the state division of public health is unhealthy lifestyle behaviors such as tobacco use and weight management, they are the two leading causes of preventable death in North Carolina," said Anne Rogers, director of integrated health management for the State Health Plan. "There's a reason we chose these two particular lifestyle behaviors."

The legislature instituted the initiatives to help shore up the troubled plan. The idea is that smokers and obese people are a greater health risk and therefore more expensive for an insurance plan to cover.

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Reaction to the initiatives has so far been muted from state employees at large. The information packets prompted a dozen or so phone calls. The State Employees Association of N.C., which has 55,000 members, was strongly opposed to the idea.

"We basically feel like the plans are discriminatory and invasive," said Mary Adelaide Bell, a spokeswoman for SEANC. "The whole incentive wellness initiative is pretty much a Band-Aid. The Democratic leadership didn't take the time to fix the health plan when it was broken and now they're trying to fix it on the backs of state employees."