Betty Redd-Mendez has been a caregiver for almost 28 years. Her brother, her son and her father all live with her in Wasilla and depend on her.
When she found out what the Medicaid cuts in Trump's budget bill would do to Alaska, she wanted to ask her senator about it. So she spent weeks arranging coverage for three family members, and she flew to Washington, D.C.
Here's what happened, in her words:
"After sitting and waiting for an hour with my fellow union members, Sullivan refused to speak with us. Finally, Sullivan caved and sent a staff member to sit with us for all of 15 minutes … and I could see that instead of taking notes, he was just doodling in his notebook."
That was one of three trips she's made where Dan Sullivan wouldn't meet with her.
The question she wanted answered
It wasn't complicated. She wanted to know why he voted for the cuts.
"Why won't Sullivan meet with the Alaskans he was elected to represent? Is he ignorant of the crisis he's created? Is he ashamed of his votes to rip away care and coverage? Scared to face us?"
Redd-Mendez is a member of SEIU 775, the caregivers union representing more than 60,000 long-term care workers across Washington, Montana and Alaska. She is not an outside agitator. She is a woman from Wasilla who takes care of three sick relatives and wanted fifteen real minutes with her senator.
She got fifteen minutes with someone drawing in a notebook.
What Sullivan said the bill would do
Sullivan didn't just vote for the budget bill. He sold it, hard.
After it passed, he told Alaskans, "I think it's fair to say no state fared better from this bill." He wrote an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News titled "Big beautiful wins for Alaska in the Big Beautiful Bill." His office put out a release saying he'd shaped the bill to "strengthen health care."
What the bill actually did
Alaska stands to lose an estimated $1.5 to $2.5 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next decade — an 11% cut.
A report prepared for the Alaska Department of Health projects more than 9,000 Alaskans will lose Medicaid coverage because of the law's new work requirements.
Redd-Mendez says the projection has already come true: since the bill was signed, nearly 10,000 Alaskans have dropped off the Medicaid rolls.
"I'm confident that those 10,000 Alaskans weren't magically able to afford healthcare elsewhere."
Why this hits Alaska harder than most places
One in three Alaskans is on Medicaid.
Alaska is rural, which means its hospitals run on Medicaid revenue. When that revenue disappears, the hospital doesn't just serve fewer Medicaid patients — it raises prices, cuts services, or closes. Everybody in the region pays for that, insured or not.
Alaska is also one of the fastest-aging states in the country, and already has one of the highest rates of people who can't get the services they need. Paid family caregiving — the thing Redd-Mendez does — is the cheap end of the system. It keeps people out of nursing homes and hospitals. Roughly 8 million family caregivers nationally rely on Medicaid for their own medical care, and 11 million receive stipends through it.
Cut that, and the crisis doesn't get smaller. It just moves somewhere more expensive.
The pattern
This isn't the first time Sullivan has been hard to find. Alaskans have written to us before about a senator who is more available to donors than constituents — we've covered his Epstein-linked donors, his luxury golf resort travel, and the fraud settlement at a company he led.
The through-line is a senator who shows up for some rooms and not others.
Redd-Mendez put it plainly:
"Our safety net is being stripped, and Dan Sullivan refuses to take accountability for his actions. It's clear he has simply lost touch with Alaskans."
An hour in a hallway. Fifteen minutes with a staffer. Three trips. And a doodle.
Source
Anchorage Daily News, "Opinion: I'm a caregiver. Sen. Dan Sullivan won't answer my questions about Medicaid cuts," by Betty Redd-Mendez, August 6, 2026.
