Sen. Max Baucus (Mitch Dumke/REUTERS)
McKinsey and Company, the consulting firm that's been under fire for the past week is finding no reprieve as more information about the study and the firm has leaked. While the company still refuses to release the methodology behind their controversial survey suggesting that as many as a third of businesses in the United States would stop offering health insurance to employees under the Affordable Care Act, sources
within the firm have criticized it, saying it "was not conducted using McKinsey's typical, meticulous methodology." What's more, a
previous study conducted by a McKinsey official has surfaced, and that study contradicts the findings of the current one.
All this has led Democrats to push for the release of the full survey and it's methodology. They've ratcheted up their demands, and a powerful Senate Democrat has issued a public call for McKinsey to come clean.
In an accompanying letter to the firm's managing director, Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) reveals that McKinsey has agreed to meet with members of his staff to discuss the survey—and includes 13 questions on methodology, which he "expect[s McKinsey] to be able to answer completely."
"Honest public discourse requires a standard level of transparency -- one McKinsey simply has not met," Baucus said in a prepared statement. "The conclusions McKinsey reached differ sharply from results of other reputable, transparent research on the subject. McKinsey's findings also counter what actually happened in Massachusetts when similar policies increased employer-sponsored health insurance. We all want the most accurate information and the ability to evaluate its integrity, which is why McKinsey should answer these basic questions."
Baucus' efforts will be reinforced by top Democrats on the three House committees—Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, Education and Workforce—with jurisdiction over health care reform, who will make similar demands of the consulting giant....
... "The American Association for Public Opinion Research Disclosure Standards make clear that it is standard professional practice to release essential information on the methodology of publicly disclosed surveys," he writes in the letter. "I urge McKinsey & Company to publicly disclose the methodology behind its survey consistent with these standards."
It's hard to imagine at this point that anything in the study would be worse for the company than it's continued stonewalling and the really disastrous public relations debacle they're currently in. It must be one stinker of a survey if they think releasing it would be worse than what they're currently experiencing.