With Congress continuing to struggle to reach a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling before the Aug. 2 deadline, speculation abounds about what might happen if the federal government goes into default. Many of the questions have to do with health care spending. The bottom line: It’s a climate of uncertainty. Gail Wilensky, who ran Medicare and Medicaid during the George H.W. Bush administration told Politico last week, “we’ve never been through anything like this” (Feder, 7/21).
With very little specific information to go on, news outlets report that state governments, in many respects, are bracing for the worst-case scenarios.
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