Murkowski to Medicaid Patients: Drop Dead

July 2, 2025

By Brian Hews

Senator Lisa Murkowski wants you to believe her vote was “difficult.” That she agonized over it. That she did what was best for Alaska. Don’t buy it. What she did was cold, calculated, and devastating.

On Tuesday, Murkowski cast the deciding vote in favor of Donald Trump’s grotesquely misnamed “One Big Beautiful Bill,” a legislative monstrosity that will decimate Medicaid as we know it. With a single “yes,” she turned her back on the 240,000 Alaskans—nearly one in three residents—who rely on Medicaid to see a doctor, fill a prescription, or survive a health emergency.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: Murkowski sold out millions of low-income Americans, and tens of thousands of her own constituents, in exchange for a handful of pork-barrel giveaways that serve as little more than political cover. A rural hospital funding clause here, a food assistance waiver there—just enough to spin to the cameras, not enough to justify the human cost.

This bill slashes over $1 trillion from Medicaid by imposing cruel work requirements, kicking people off for paperwork errors, cutting reimbursement rates, and putting long-term care for seniors and the disabled on the chopping block. It’s not reform—it’s demolition. And Murkowski knew it. She read the same Congressional Budget Office report everyone else did: over 10 million Americans will lose coverage. Millions more will fall through the cracks. But hey, Trump wanted a win.

Lisa Murkowski gave it to him.

For years, she tried to brand herself as a “moderate.” A voice of reason. A swing vote with a conscience. But this vote strips away the facade. You don’t get to claim moral high ground while gutting the lifeline that keeps cancer patients in treatment, rural children in check-ups, and the elderly in nursing homes. You don’t get to talk about “protecting Alaska” while throwing your state’s most vulnerable under the bus so you can say you’re still “at the table.”

This wasn’t about Alaska. This was about Murkowski protecting her seat in a Republican Party that no longer tolerates independence or integrity. She caved to Trump, plain and simple, and no amount of flowery press releases or cherry-picked provisions can change that.

In Alaska, Medicaid pays for more than 40% of births. It covers long-term care for seniors in remote villages. It supports Native health programs already stretched thin. What happens now, when the federal funds disappear and the rules tighten? Murkowski won’t be there to pick up the pieces. She’ll be in D.C., patting herself on the back for “delivering results,” while the people who trusted her scramble to survive the wreckage she helped create.

This isn’t just a betrayal of voters. It’s a betrayal of basic decency. Lisa Murkowski made a choice. She chose Trump. She chose the billionaires. She chose political self-preservation over human life. And now, she owns every clinic closure, every denied claim, every child who gets sicker because their family couldn’t afford a visit to the doctor.

History won’t be kind to Lisa Murkowski.

Contact Brian Hews at [email protected] or follow @cerritosnews.bsky.social