New reporting from Anchorage Daily News highlights how Dan Sullivan “faced criticism” as Alaskans face skyrocketing health care and grocery costs as a result of Sullivan’s votes to end ACA subsidies, slash Medicaid, and cut food assistance. 

Sullivan has refused to hold a public town hall to hear from Alaskans about their crushing health care and grocery bills, opting instead to hold small, non-public meetings “where he isn’t likely to encounter raucous pushback.” 

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Anchorage Daily News: Sullivan is on a quest to rebrand the Big Beautiful Bill to Alaskans. For some, it remains a tough sell.

By Iris Samuels

January 1, 2026 

• In U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan’s telling, the One Big Beautiful Bill is a ”home run” for Alaska.

• Polling shows Alaskans remain skeptical.
  
  
• To live in Alaska is to contend with some of the highest, if not the absolute highest, health care and grocery prices in America. Many Alaskans look at the budget reconciliation bill and see no reprieve from the rising costs that govern their everyday decisions.

• The sprawling measure adopted by Republicans in July[…] slashed funding for Medicaid and food assistance, primarily by adding eligibility hurdles like work requirements that are expected to eliminate coverage for millions across the country.

• As opponents have described the bill in catastrophic terms, Sullivan has been its persistent cheerleader.

• Soon after the bill was signed into law, he faced criticism for not hosting a town hall open to the general public. While other congressional Republicans stopped talking about it on the campaign trail after encountering skepticism from voters, Sullivan doubled down on his pitch.

• His political fate could rest on whether Alaskans are convinced. Sullivan is up for reelection next year, and […] political action committees affiliated with Senate Democrats are already running ads in Alaska attacking Sullivan’s vote for the budget reconciliation bills, to the chagrin of Alaska’s junior senator.

• In one ad produced by Native Movement before the bill passed the Senate, an Alaska Native woman voices her worry that the bill will cause her to lose health care coverage.

• “Sen. Sullivan, I’m sorry our people voted for you,” the woman, an Athabascan and cancer survivor, says in the video.

• The sentiment expressed in the ad has had staying power in some pockets of the state. Meanwhile, Sullivan has focused his meetings on business groups and local governments, where he isn’t likely to encounter raucous pushback or heckling.

• Cathy Giessel, a fellow Alaska Republican who serves as majority leader of the state Senate, has a different view of the legislation.

• “I bet if you asked the average citizen on the street, where does the oil come from, they wouldn’t actually be able to tell you,” said Giessel, who represents a district stretching from affluent Anchorage Hillside neighborhoods to the isolated outpost of Whittier. “What they do know, though, is what it costs them if their child is sick.”

• “To try to paint beautiful colors on HR1 because of resource development opportunities is putting lipstick on a pig, in my opinion,” said Giessel.

• Giessel, a nurse practitioner by training and chair of the Alaska Senate Resources Committee, has a ground-level view of how the bill will impact the state.

• The seesaw movements in federal resource extraction policies in Alaska leave the oil industry with mixed messages that do little to incentivize long-term investment, and the promised oil lease sales in the bill are not guaranteed to withstand the scrutiny of future administrations, Giessel contends.
  
  
• In terms of caring for Alaska’s most vulnerable, Giessel worries that the provisions in the bill will add new burdens on the state at a time when it is already floundering.

• Alaska’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has the highest error rate in the country. The delayed implementation of a multimillion-dollar penalty for high error rates negotiated by Alaska’s U.S. senators in the bill is helpful, but there is no guarantee the state can get its act together in time, Giessel said.

• That’s because the bill also demands the state double the frequency of eligibility checks for Medicaid. Those eligibility checks are conducted by the same people charged with administering SNAP benefits, and those people are already stretched thin.

• State Rep. Genevieve Mina, an Anchorage Democrat who chairs the House Health and Social Services Committee, attended Sullivan’s recent presentation on the budget reconciliation bill. Her eyes grew wide at some of his statements.

• “It feels like we’re all on a sinking ship, and Alaska has been thrown a life jacket, but the life jacket has holes in it,” Mina said in an interview afterward.

• […] many health care advocates are still bracing for some impact to a program that serves one in three Alaskans.

• The state of Alaska has not provided a specific projection on the share of the state’s roughly 250,000 Medicaid enrollees who could lose coverage because they fail to meet new work requirements and do not qualify for any exemptions included in the bill.

• Some number of Alaskans will lose insurance, Mina asserted. The impact of that, she said, will reverberate through Alaska’s health care industry, which also happens to be the largest private-sector employer in the state.

• Uninsured Alaskans typically show up more often in emergency rooms, driving up both the cost of care and the wait times in hospitals. It remains to be seen whether hundreds of millions of dollars annually in funding for Alaska through the Rural Health Transformation Fund — which comes with conditions, such as a prohibition on using the funds to pay for Medicaid or to build new facilities — can help negate the new Medicaid provisions.

• “It’s more of an indirect harm that’s going to be caused in our health care system, and it’s really hard to estimate how large that harm will be,” Mina said.

Reminder: Dan Sullivan cast the deciding vote for Republicans’ toxic plan that ripped health care away from thousands of Alaskans and sent premiums soaring for tens of thousands more. Alaskans’ health insurance costs will go up by an estimated $1,836 per year on average. In all, Sullivan voted seven times in less than two months against extending ACA tax credits that would lower Alaskans’ health care costs: September 30th, October 1st, October 3rd, October 6th, October 8th, October 9th, and November 10th.