Officer Musings
September 4, 2013
The standing committees have been established and the organizational meetings are taking place.
The textbook proposal passed the Senate 26-2, and so we are off and running. There are three
“big topics” for this week’s musings: the Wellness Initiative, the role of Chairs and Departments,
and the rules surrounding outside employment.
The official rollout of the Wellness Initiative was made with the President’s email. More specific
information will, we are sure, be forthcoming. However, we had a lengthy discussion of it at this
week’s Executive Committee and we think you will be interested in how that went. D. Richards
(Economics) and C. Barton (Staff Benefits) helped us understand the issues involved. (None of
what follows is intended to contradict official communications regarding the initiative.)
ISU is self-insured and has claims that are on an unsustainable time trend. The Wellness
Initiative is designed to help put us on a sustainable path by helping us become healthier. It will
start with two optional elements. The first regards tobacco. The second regards health screenings.
Regarding tobacco, ultimately, unless the employee and insured spouse/domestic partner sign a
statement attesting to their abstaining from tobacco products or attesting to their participation in
one of several named tobacco cessation plans, there will be an insurance surcharge of $50 per
month. For 2014, participation and agreement to abstain from tobacco by the spouse/domestic
partner is voluntary. For 2015 and beyond it is required to avoid the surcharge. The reason that
tobacco use is specifically targeted is twofold: it is clearly true that smoking leads to higher
health care expenses to the university and it is also true that smoking is the ONLY behavior that
the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act allows to be targeted.
Regarding health screenings, between mid-September and mid-October there will be a health
screening service on campus. Stations will be set up to take a finger-stick of blood, blood
pressure, weight, BMI, etc. Once you have completed the assessments, your results will be
presented to you and you may be counseled on what you need to do with your family physician
to address the findings. The entire process should be done in under an hour. For this, in the 20142015 health insurance year, you will receive a $30 per month discount on the premiums relative
to nonparticipants. It will be voluntary.
Spouses/domestic partners are welcome to participate, but need not participate. If the
spouse/domestic partner is also an employee, as long as the person paying the health insurance
premium is a participant, the discount will be available whether or not the spouse/domestic
partner is a participant.
Regarding the future, there likely will be ties to the BEHAVIORS of individuals who are
participants regarding specific biometrics. This is likely to cause concern for some, so it is
important to understand that the law does NOT ALLOW ISU to charge more for those with, for
example, high blood pressure. It only allows ISU to reward those with appropriate blood pressure
or those doing something to control their blood pressure. So a person with high blood pressure
would not be penalized, (or would not lose the incentive premium reduction) unless they fail to
go to their family physician or they fail to take the blood pressure medication prescribed to them
by their family physician.
You are allowed to have your family physician complete the medical evaluation (and sign that
they have) if it is done within the screening window. Software will allow participants to track
their progress.
New health insurance premiums begin in January. The old salary tier system is being replaced
with a family income test. If family income is less than 150% of the poverty line for their family
type, employees will receive a subsidized premium.
Now on to the role of chairs and departments. As you may know, the President and Provost meet
with the Executive Committee on the Tuesday after the Senate meeting for an informal
gathering. The purpose of the meeting is for a completely off-the-record conversation regarding
the direction of the university and topics range from weighty to mundane. These have been used
by the President to offer trial balloons regarding policies he would like us to consider as well as
to provide us with greater context to his reasoning. The early meetings are usually the ones
where we get the “big issue” for the year and this one appears to be a how we respond to the
Board’s desire to measure departmental progress on helping the university meet strategic goals
(retention and graduation rates, for instance). You will learn what we know in future editions of
these musings.
Near the conclusion of Tuesday’s regular Exec meeting there was a lively discussion regarding
the policies we have regarding full-time employees and their ability to engage in outside
employment, commercial, or teaching opportunities. The crux of the discussion centered around
a now tabled FAC motion regarding this issue. The faculty of ISU have a long history of owning
local small businesses, providing consulting services, engaging in counseling in their fields, as
well as teaching for other institutions. Each of these activities can be performed within a
reasonable boundary and each of these activities can so dominate a person’s life that they harm
the work the faculty member is supposed to have committed when they took the job here.
Governance (whether it goes back to FAC or stays at Exec) will likely try to craft appropriate
language defining notification obligations, authorization processes, and reasonable expectations
that faculty (of all full time varieties have) to pay attention to ISU students.
On all of these issues, we invite your input, either directly as a response to this email, or
indirectly through your elected Senate representatives.