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A top Senate Democrat is asking a health insurer that provides plans for McDonald's Corp. restaurant workers to disclose details of the plans to the Senate.

West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, on Friday sent the request to Scott Beacham, president and chief executive of BCS Insurance Group of Oak Brook Terrace, Ill. Sen. Rockefeller asked for five years of data explaining how much the carrier charges in premiums and spends on care, as well as the number of workers who reach the plans' annual benefit caps.

McDonald's warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul. Janet Adamy discusses. Also, Neal Lipschutz discusses the exit plan that the U.S. has agreed on to exit the governments interest in AIG.

His letter followed an article in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week reporting that McDonald's warned federal regulators it could drop its health-insurance plan for nearly 30,000 restaurant workers unless regulators waived a new requirement of the health overhaul. The requirement, known as the minimum medical loss ratio, concerns the percentage of revenue received from premiums that must be spent on benefits.

McDonald's provides a "mini-med" limited benefit plan for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.

Sen. Rockefeller said the details of the plan reported this week indicate "your company is apparently spending a significantly lower percentage of McDonald's employees' health-care premiums on their medical care" than is required by the health overhaul law. The law requires that plans pay a minimum of between 80% and 85% of their revenue on medical care instead of overhead expenses.

Those figures suggest that "McDonald's hourly wage workers are setting aside portions of their paychecks for an insurance product that may not be providing them a good value," he wrote. The $2,000 maximum annual coverage limit would not come close to covering the costs of hospital emergency services or the delivery of a child, he added.

Mr. Beacham and BCS didn't respond to requests for comment. A McDonald's spokeswoman said the company was aware of the senator's request and declined to comment on it. Sen. Rockefeller requested that the carrier respond by Oct. 15.

Write to Janet Adamy at janet.adamy@wsj.com

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