Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Here We Go Again

A friend recently pointed me to an article in The Economist.  In the article, we're told "In June McKinsey, a consultancy, found in a survey that 30% of firms would definitely or probably stop offering insurance after 2014, when the exchanges are in place."  We've been through this before: the McKinsey study is simply not credible, because its authors failed to follow most of the rules of good surveys.  (For a refresher on this, see here and here).  So why on earth is The Economist, which claims to offer "authoritative insight and opinion on international news, politics, business, finance, science and technology," quoting a bogus survey?  Worse, why are they quoting it after quite a few credible journalists and academics have criticized its statistical failings?  Sigh.

I haven't had time to go through the related survey by the Federation of Independent Business - which apparently found that 57% of companies would consider dropping insurance completely if some employees began moving into the insurance exchanges created by the PPACA - but its findings are intriguing enough that I intend to do so as soon as possible.

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