Pete Buttigieg: I ‘doubt’ my work with Blue Cross Blue Shield was part of what led to layoffs

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday said he doubts the private sector consulting work he did for a major health provider in Michigan played a part in subsequent layoffs at the company.

“I doubt it,” Mr. Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “I don’t know what happened in the time after I left. That was in 2007, when they decided to shrink in 2009.”

He said that when he was at McKinsey & Company, an elite consulting firm, he was assigned to a team doing an analysis on “overhead costs” for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.

“Nothing to do with claims, or what to do with patients, but kind of as an organization — buildings, rent, utilities, travel, that kind of thing,” Mr. Buttigieg said.

“I certainly saw how big and complicated an insurance company could be,” he said. “That was my very first study. So honestly, most of the time, I was just figuring out how to do my job and perfecting my PowerPoint skills. But it at least gave me a sense of what that world is like.”

Under pressure from Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a top rival for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Buttigieg on Tuesday had released a list of clients he worked with while he was at McKinsey.

In addition to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Mr. Buttigieg worked with Loblaw’s, which is a grocery and retail chain in the Toronto area; Best Buy; the National Resources Defense Council; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Department of Energy; the Energy Foundation, which is an environmental nonprofit group; the U.S. Defense Department; and the U.S. Postal Service.

He had previously resisted disclosing more information about his time at McKinsey, saying he was bound by a confidentiality agreement. But the company said earlier this week that after getting permission from the clients, Mr. Buttigieg was allowed to disclose their names.

Upon releasing the clients, Mr. Buttigieg said his work “amounted to mostly research and analysis,” though progressives are continuing to raise questions about the nature of his work and the clients he had.