Democrats to McKinsey: 'Prove it'

Democrats from the White House on down are pushing back hard on a recent study concluding that up to 30% of employers providing health insurance coverage to 180 million workers will drop it after more provisions of the 2010 federal healthcare law are implemented in 2014.

Nancy-Ann DeParle, assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff, wrote on the White House blog on June 8 that the study from McKinsey & Co. “doesn't provide the complete picture about how the Affordable Care Act will strengthen the healthcare system and make it easier for employers to offer high quality coverage to their employees.”

Among DeParle's specific criticisms was that the McKinsey study was an “outlier” because three previous studies by the RAND Corp., the Urban Institute and the consulting firm Mercer concluded that private employers would drop their employee coverage at much lower rates.

Additionally, dropping coverage is unlikely to save money for employers, DeParle wrote, because they will face penalties and lose tax savings. She also highlighted the lack of a similar trend of employers dropping their employee coverage in Massachusetts, which implemented a healthcare overhaul in 2006. That program echoes some aspects of the federal law.

DeParle and other critics of the McKinsey study have blasted that company for not releasing the design of the survey or the questions asked of the 1,300 responding employers.

“Refusing to release the underlying questions and methodology undermines the credibility of the findings,” wrote California Rep. Henry Waxman and other leading House Democrats in a June 16 letter to the company. “We are concerned that, if the survey based its conclusions on a questionable instrument and potentially biased methodology, McKinsey may have provided the American public with invalid information about the impact of the Affordable Care Act.”

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the authors of the 2010 law, wrote the company with similar demands.

“We all want the most accurate information and the ability to evaluate its integrity, which is why McKinsey should answer these basic questions,” Baucus wrote in a June 16 letter to the company.

Those requests have so far not drawn more details from McKinsey, which did not respond to my request for the information, either.

But the strong responses by Democrats to the study do highlight their ongoing concerns about the potency of various arguments against the law, including the predictions of opponents that it would lead to millions of Americans losing their current insurance coverage. And that coverage is overwhelming popular among American workers, even as the overall healthcare system is routinely criticized.

The battle over the McKinsey study also comes as most of the public continues to oppose the healthcare law. The RealClearPolitics poll of polls reported Friday that an average of 50% oppose the law, while 40% support it. That popularity deficit generally dates back to the law's passage, according to the site.

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