In a letter sent on Thursday to Census Bureau Director John H. Thompson, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) urged the administration to continue asking the existing health insurance coverage questions in its annual survey.
The questions, according to the senators, should be asked along with planned new questions for two years.
“Congress and the American people count on the Census Bureau to provide an accurate report of the law’s impact on health insurance coverage, so it is alarming that the administration appears to be altering survey questions in a way that will obscure the law’s impact,” the senators’ letter said. “We are deeply troubled by this and the American people should be too.”
According to a Tuesday New York Times report, the Census Bureau is changing its annual Current Population Survey this year in regards to health insurance coverage to an extent that will make measuring the impact of the new health care law’s impact on health insurance difficult.
“We respectfully request that you continue to collect data using both the old and new survey questions for this year and next year,” the senators said in their letter. “Of course we always want the best statistical information, but the collection of only one year of comparable data is insufficient. Continuing to collect data using both the old and new survey questions will help ensure that you do not conflate a change in measurement with changes due to implementation of the new health care law.”
The letter also sought answers to several questions as to how the bureau would avoid the appearance of impropriety and the “seeming intent to manipulate data” with the change, including if the White House, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the White House Office of Management and Budget played any part in the decision to implement the new survey questions.