Sullivan voted to cut Medicaid by $1 trillion

“So I think you were the guy,” an irritated Sen. Dan Sullivan said to Sen. Forrest Dunbar Wednesday, “that asked me last year about Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security.”

“When you asked me, I said ‘We’re not gonna cut Medicaid.’”

“You know who cut Medicaid for Alaska? Chuck Schumer. All right. That’s a fact. I wish that you and others could have gone to Schumer and said hey why are you cutting Medicaid for Alaska?” Sullivan said.

That’s not a fact.

Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats did not cut Medicaid for Alaska in the One Big Beautiful Bill, now being marketed by Republicans as the Working Families Tax Cuts Act.

What actually happened was that Sullivan tried to get a Medicaid formula increase for Alaska in the OBBB that would have generated about $200 million more a year for Alaska. Democrats challenged the increase under a Senate rule and the parliamentarian decided it could not be in the bill.

Removing a proposed Medicaid formula increase to benefit Alaska from a bill is not the same thing as cutting Medicaid spending in Alaska.

Meanwhile, a year ago Sullivan didn’t tell Dunbar and other legislators that “We’re not gonna cut Medicaid.”

Check for yourself. I included Sullivan’s entire response word-for-word in this piece published March 21, 2025.

When the OBBB reached the Senate floor last summer, Sullivan voted to cut Medicaid by $1 trillion over the next decade. He doesn’t like to admit that he voted to cut Medicaid.

“You’ve seen these ads on TV saying the budget reconciliation bill, Congressman Begich, myself you know voted to cut Medicaid,” Sullivan said on December 29 in a press conference with Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

“We didn’t vote to cut Medicaid at all. There’s nothing in this bill that cuts Medicaid for Alaska. The only guy in D.C. who literally, factually, who cut Medicaid for Alaska was Schumer and the Democrats. That’s a fact.”

He said this to the Legislature this week: “And finally the bill does not touch Medicaid for Alaska. It is protected. The bill does not cut $1 of Medicaid funding to our state. If we’re gonna talk honestly about Medicaid cuts, the only party that actually succeeded in cutting Medicaid funding, as we wrote and debated the Working Families Tax Cuts Act were Senate Democrats and Schumer as they stripped out the FMAP provision of our bill cutting about $200 million a year of Medicaid funding to Alaska. That is a fact. That is a fact,” Sullivan said.

That is not a fact.

Qualifying the Medicaid claim—on occasion—to say Republicans did not “cut Medicaid for Alaska,” does not change the $1 trillion arithmetic.

One major part of the GOP cut that does not impact Alaska is from the limits on “provider taxes” 49 other states have used to increase their Medicaid revenues. Alaska doesn’t have that tax.

As to whether the bill will cut Medicaid in Alaska in the years ahead, that is open to argument.

A study released this week says that from 9,400 to 13, 600 Alaskans are likely to lose Medicaid coverage because of requirements in the new law about working, volunteering, filling out paperwork and other compliance measures. That does not include how many will lose coverage under the rule requiring the state to redetermine Medicaid eligibility every six months.

Many people will be required to work, volunteer, go to school or get training for 20 hours a week under the law. The state is supposed to monitor all of this. Alaska Natives are among those exempt from the requirements.

Sullivan said he knew nothing about the study and the estimates of how many people would lose Medicaid coverage.

Sullivan mentioned a hypothetical 28-year-old and said if “you’re not gonna do 20 hours a week on one of these things, to me that’s not a Medicaid cut. That is a choice from the individual. And I think it’s important as I mentioned for those individuals to encourage them to advance and help their community through school, through volunteering, through training. And so I think it’s a common sense reform.”

“I haven’t seen the numbers. But again we put in, our state got more flexibilities on the implementation of those requirements than any other state in the country. As I mentioned some of my Senate Democrat colleagues tried to strip those out. Not sure why they were coming after us so hard,” he said.

Nationwide, the biggest Medicaid cuts will take place with new work requirements that will be applied to some Medicaid recipients, but not others.

The state will have to verify that a person completes at least 80 hours of a “qualifying activity” for at least a month before getting coverage. And then do so a second time for at least one month in every six-month period. The compliance program is not going to be simple or cheap. It will be a major chore for the state.

The estimates about the potential reduction in Medicaid coverage in Alaska are based in part on the experience in Arkansas where about 72 percent of those who were not automatically exempted did not file the necessary paperwork and lost coverage.

A KFF research report says that most people covered under Medicaid expansion are already working 80 or more hours a month.

“Many adults who do not meet the work requirements are attending school or have an illness or disability that limits their ability to work and would, therefore, appear to qualify for an exemption from the work requirements. Nevertheless, these adults are at risk of losing coverage if they are unable to navigate reporting requirements established by their state. Expansion adults ages 50-64 may be at greater risk of losing coverage under the new requirements because they are less likely to work 80 or more hours in a month or to qualify for an exemption,” the nonprofit group said.

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