By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO
Historically, voters may want to reflect on Murkowski’s actions and not the words of her current or earlier campaign rhetoric. Let’s review her history of what she said, and then what she did, leading up to her vote to not repeal Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act.
During the 2010 U.S. Senate race, Sen. Lisa Murkowski declared publicly to Republican voters that she would support the winner of the Republican Primary. After she was defeated in the primary, she instead maliciously attacked the winner of the Republican primary through an unprecedented write-in campaign.
Up until the 2022 elections, this campaign supported by some Alaska Republican Party leadership was one of the most distasteful and egregious campaigns in Alaska history.
ARP leadership’s decision to support Murkowski has led to the deterioration of the Alaska primary election process. It also is having dire consequences for Alaska, for the nation, and for the Alaska Republican Party, especially with the Murkowski-supported Ballot Measure 2.
Ranked choice voting (Ballot Measure 2), supported by Murkowski, was a blatant deception to fool Alaska voters into thinking their vote was limiting or stopping the flow of outside “dark money” and its influences upon Alaska.
Instead, it opened the door to “dark money” influence and eliminated the previous primary voting system in Alaska.
With the election of Donald J. Trump as President, Alaskans and America saw the door open for the limiting of federal control over America’s health care system, America’s banking and mortgage system, and a change in America’s judicial system. Alaska saw a potential advent of development and pro-growth policies never before seen since the pipeline era.
Regarding America’s health care system, the Affordable Care Act has proven to be a financial and administrative train wreck to Alaska and the nation, increasing health care costs, reducing health care quality, and expanding the federal bureaucracy’s power and control over one of the largest sectors of the US economy.
With the Trump presidency, for the first time since March 23, 2010 (the date Obamacare was signed into law), we all saw the potential for reducing health care costs and returning decision making back to the states and their political subdivisions.
In Murkowski’s Sept. 30, 2014, op-ed, she states, “The key reason I opposed the health care law when it was proposed and jammed through Congress? Not politics; just simple math. The basic economics of being a high-cost rural state with limited providers has resulted in the costly outcomes we are seeing today.”
She went on to cite, in Alaska, Premera Blue Cross insurance rates will increase between 35 and 40 percent and MODA’s rates would increase 22 to 28.8%. With this she reminded her readers that the Alaska Division of Insurance “also announced that even with these cost increases, the health insurers were still going to be losing millions of dollars.”.
In her Dec. 3, 2015 press release, titled, “Murkowski on Senate Floor: “For Whom is the Affordable Care Act Affordable?”, subtitled, “Senator Details Harmful Effects of ACA on Alaskans, Announces Support for Repeal Bill”, Murkowski stated: “Senator Murkowski has long been an opponent of the Affordable Care Act, recognizing from day one that the one-size-fits-all bill would never work in a rural, sparsely populated state such as Alaska.”
Murkowski ran in her 2016 election and received support from the Republican Party and from Republican voters in her 2016 election by campaigning to repeal Obamacare.
It is noteworthy to ask that of the reported 70 attempts Congress voted to repeal Obamacare, how many times had Murkowski surreptitiously voted to repeal it with the clear knowledge that Obama would veto any bill repealing any part of Obamacare sent to his desk?
At the 2016 Alaska U.S. Senate debate, Murkowski stated, “I voted against Obamacare, largely because it puts government in control of choosing what care is covered. Access, as we know it, is a critical issue here in this state. The ACA (Affordable Care Act, Obamacare), quite honestly, is collapsing because of federal mandate and lack of flexibility. What states need is more flexibility, more choice, not less.”
In 2017, when the vote to repeal Obamacare did finally come before the Republican-controlled Congress and knowing that Trump would sign the repeal the moment it hit his desk, Murkowski betrayed the voters who elected her, the Republicans who supported her election, and the Alaska Republican Party by siding with Democrats against her Republican colleagues and against the principles of the Alaska Republican Party, by voting with the Democrats against the Senate vote to repeal Obamacare.
Her single vote doomed any chance of repealing Obamacare.
Murkowski’s July 28, 2017, press release stated, “I voted no on the healthcare proposal last night because both sides must do better on process and substance. The Affordable Care Act remains a flawed law that I am committed to reforming with a structure that works better for all Americans. But to do that, the Senate must fully devote itself to an effort to improve the healthcare system in this country, reduce costs, increase access, and deliver the quality of care that our families want and deserve.”
Thus because of Alaska’s senior Senator’s single vote, Murkowski kept Alaska and American under the tyranny of federally controlled centralized health care, the capricious costs of which are inestimable to financial and health care solvency.
Murkowski is a fair-weather politician who changes her tune the moment the political winds change. It is time to fire her. On November 8, 2022, reject Lisa Murkowski.
Michael Tavoliero is a realtor in Eagle River, is active in the Alaska Republican Party and chaired Eaglexit.
