Unofficial campaign ad for Sullivan portrays him as Medicaid champion
A new unofficial campaign ad claiming Sen. Dan Sullivan is “fighting to protect and strengthen Medicaid” is paid for by a dark money group from Virginia that was led until recently by a former aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell.
The ad by One Nation, which supports Senate Republicans, calls Sullivan “Our Trusted Champion.”
“No one works harder for Alaska,” the Virginia group says.
One Nation is a 501(c)4 nonprofit group, also known as a "dark money" group, which means it's not required to disclose its donors. The so-called social welfare organization was led by Steve Law, who resigned in December.
“Law, who once served as Mr. McConnell’s chief of staff, oversaw the rise of the super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, and its allied nonprofit arm, One Nation, into behemoths in Republican politics,” the New York Times reported last December.
The Senate Leadership Fund and One Nation raised $2.3 billion over the past decade, the report said, tapping into many of the richest GOP donors.
The ad promoting Sullivan is an example of a sham issue ad that is supposedly not a campaign ad, but a pitch to promote a point of view about public policy.
It ends with the tagline that the owners of our political system pretend makes it something other than a campaign ad: “Call Senator Dan Sullivan and thank him for his work protecting our health care benefits.” The tagline doesn’t say, “Vote for Sullivan.” If it did, it would be a political ad.
Everyone knows that these are unregulated campaign ads. The issue here is reelecting Sullivan in 2026.
Of course anyone is free to call Sullivan’s office at (907) 271-5915 and express an opinion.
In portraying Sullivan as a champion of Medicaid, the ad does not mention that Sullivan’s stated desire is to strengthen Medicaid for the “most vulnerable,” a term he refuses to define.
He regards some percentage of Alaskans on Medicaid as not being in that “most” category and therefore ripe for removal.
I wrote about this April 20 and will do so as long as he qualifies his support for Medicaid with that adjective.
“We should all want to weed out waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid and Medicare,” said Sullivan.
No one disagrees with that. Everyone hates waste, fraud and abuse.
But removing tens of thousands of Alaskans from Medicaid is not weeding out waste, fraud and abuse.
The budget blueprint adopted by House and Senate Republicans proposes that the committee overseeing Medicare and Medicaid come up with $880 billion in budget cuts over a decade.
Medicaid is a chief GOP target and the Republican talking point is that the system should be restructured to reduce the number of people who qualify or to require states to pick up far more of the cost.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski supported the amendment, which failed 49-50. “I supported an amendment to strike that instruction during our late-night vote, but unfortunately, it fell short,” she said.
Alaska is one of 40 states that expanded Medicaid coverage under Obamacare. In Alaska, this meant that adults with incomes up to 138 percent above the poverty level got health care.
Nearly 40 percent of Alaskans are on Medicaid.
The federal government pays 90 percent of the cost of coverage for the 76,000 Alaskans who receive coverage under the expansion program.
Sullivan won’t make this clear to Alaskans, but supporting Medicaid only for the “most vulnerable” would be a disaster for health care in Alaska and not just those who would lose insurance. It would damage the hospitals and clinics that have seen a big decrease in unpaid medical debt since Medicaid expansion.
In 2017, Sullivan’s office produced this 14-page “Dear Alaskan” treatise in which he supported plans to shift costs from the federal government to the state to save money. This was part of the Obamacare repeal effort that failed, thanks to Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and John McCain.
Sullivan complained in 2017 that Obamacare “funds able-bodied Americans above the poverty level at a much more generous federal match” than traditional Medicaid.
He said the expansion coverage was “very generous.” He claimed the responsible thing to do was to reduce the amount the federal government paid to the state from 90 percent to 50 percent by 2024.
Shifting costs to the state would mean an “equal split.” He said that no one would be forced off Medicaid by the changes, as long as the state agreed to pick up a much bigger part of the tab.
This is what it means to protect the “most vulnerable.”
After Sullivan’s annual speech to the Alaska Legislature, Anchorage Sen. Forrest Dunbar asked him if he would support any cuts to Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security.
Sullivan replied:
“So look I mean the one thing we’re doing to help our country and help our state is this,” said Sullivan, holding up Trump’s executive order to “unleash” Alaska development.
Sullivan went on at length, mentioned the most vulnerable and concluded by saying that too many people are on Medicaid in Alaska.
“But let me make an important point on this that I don’t think gets talked about nearly enough. Almost one-third of Alaskans, 248,000 Alaskans are on the rolls of Medicaid now. OK? We, I think, accept that. Some see it as a good. I don’t see it as a good, OK? I think our goal should be to increase our private sector economy and increase the opportunities for people to move off Medicaid and get private sector insurance from a stronger private sector economy, which is what this is all about.”
He again held up a copy of Trump’s executive order.
“We don’t talk about that enough,” he said.
He never did say if he would oppose cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
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An unofficial campaign ad for Sen. Dan Sullivan asks viewers to call his office at (907) 271-5915.