The obamacare boondoggle unraveling before our eyes!
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McKinsey Rebuts Critics of Its Health Insurance Survey
June 21, 2011 10:39 A.M.
By Avik Roy
Obamacare’s defenders have worked themselves into a tizzy, attacking the recent study published by McKinsey & Co., the world’s leading management consulting firm. The study indicated that 30 percent of surveyed employers were “definitely or probably” planning on discontinuing employer-sponsored health insurance after 2014.
Because McKinsey had refused to release details of the methodology used in their work, Democrats and left-of-center writers accused the company of having something to hide. A “keyed-in source says McKinsey is unlikely to release the survey materials because ‘it would be damaging to them,’” asserted Brian Beutler in Talking Points Memo. Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) wrote a letter to McKinsey demanding they release the survey’s methodology, with three House committees intending to follow suit.
Well, lo and behold, McKinsey decided to release the details: the full questionnaire used in their survey, along with a 206-page report detailing the survey’s complete results. Accompanying these details was a thoughtful discussion of the survey’s methodology, one that pops the balloon of those who tried to tar McKinsey as some sort of careless, partisan outfit. Despite reporting which implied that McKinsey wanted to distance itself from its own work, the company declared, “We stand by the integrity and methodology of the survey.”
The survey was funded by McKinsey
One of the silliest criticisms of the McKinsey study was that the company didn’t declare its funding source. It’s a silly criticism because the funding source doesn’t tell you anything about the truth value of the study. If ExxonMobil declares that 2 plus 2 equals 4, is arithmetic suddenly corrupt? At any rate, the company put the speculation to rest by making the entirely unsurprising disclosure that “the opinion survey was paid for entirely by McKinsey as part of its routine, proprietary research.”
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