Although McKinsey released the methodology of its ESI study early this week after heavy pressure from Democrats, those same Democrats aren't getting any quieter.
"As we learn more, it's become clear that this one flawed study from McKinsey is truly an outlier," Nancy-Ann DeParle, assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff, said in a blog post.
Democrats have consistently blasted McKinsey's survey—which claimed a third of employers will likely drop health coverage for employees due to health care reform—from the time they released the initial results. McKinsey has repeatedly conceded that the study was not intended as a predictive economic analysis, but rather as a study capturing the attitudes of employers.
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Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus again blasted McKinsey for "unjustifiable explanation" after the consulting firm had released more information, and said that McKinsey reversed its position on its prediction. "McKinsey said its survey was not a prediction, but the plain language of the article certainly sounded like a prediction," Baucus said in a statement.
Baucus also slammed McKinsey for asking "cherry-picked facts related to the Affordable Care Act" and concluded that McKinsey's failure to release all of the sources used in its article results in an incomplete picture for readers.
But some call the Democrats' response a case of simple bullying.
"It's the classic Max Baucus playbook—harass those who he disagrees with, in an attempt to intimidate them into more favorable coverage," Forbes wrote last week. "Baucus did the same thing to insurer Humana in 2009, launching an investigation into the company because it had the temerity to inform its Medicare Advantage members that significant cuts were coming to the program."
Still, though, "the survey – and the Democrats' response to it – is no surprise. It's not good PR for the Democrats and that's why they are challenging it so vehemently, in spite of the fact that McKinsey is a well-known and highly regarded consulting firm," says John Conkling, vice president of national accounts at Fringe Benefit Group.
"It's just the beginning of what we're going to see as the presidential election heats up," Conkling says. "We are going to see surveys from every side of the table analyzing how Americans feel about health care reform, financial reform, unemployment – they are all going to be hot political topics and quite controversial. I encourage everyone to look closely at who's sponsoring the survey – in most cases, someone is paying to have the study done, so who's agenda is it going to support?"
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