Health survey not so shadowy and nefarious after all

Remember that McKinsey & Co. survey that showed employers planned to drop their health coverage for tens of millions of their workers once Obamacare kicked in, potentially making the health law’s costs skyrocket? And then remember the outrage from Obamacare fans who claimed the survey must have been conducted along some pretty nefarious lines in order to reach such outrageous (to them) conclusions — and said McKinsey’s failure to release its methodology and full results were tantamount to proof of such nefariousness?

Well, so much for the outrage part. From Avik Roy on his Forbes health-policy blog:

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.”

Roy runs down the real evidence on all the talking points the left mustered against the study. As it turns out, McKinsey (as opposed to some shadowy, anti-Democrat force) paid for the study; it was conducted by, a widely known pollster based in Paris; the respondents represented a broad range of companies, for which they make or help make health-benefits decisions; the information the survey company provided respondents about the health exchanges was not slanted against Obamacare.

And, as he explains, the results may be even worse than originally advertised for Obamacare proponents:

We knew that 30 percent (29.7%, to be exact) of respondents would “definitely or probably” drop employer-sponsored insurance. But the raw data shows that another 41.6% of respondents were undecided on the subject. Only 28.7% of respondents “definitely or probably would not” drop worker health coverage. (italics original)

So, to review: We have a survey that comes to different conclusions than economic forecasting models and therefore is attacked by liberal commentators — who, amusingly enough, in order to criticize McKinsey for its alleged lack of transparency, relied on anonymous sources at the company and elsewhere. And when all the details come out, the speculation turns out to have been much recrimination about nothing.

Source: http://blogs.ajc.com