WASHINGTON (KTUU) – Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, warned Wednesday that Alaska faces some of the “most extremes of the extremes” when it comes to skyrocketing healthcare costs. Nearly 28,000 Alaskans could see their insurance premiums spike by as much as 295% if Congress fails to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies by the end of the month.

“My home state of Alaska appears to suffer some of the most extremes of the extremes when we’re talking about these high costs,” Murkowski said at the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Wednesday. “People are expecting us to come up with a solution.”

The warning comes as Alaska ranks among the hardest-hit states in the nation for premium increases, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, after the crisis was highlighted during the 43-day government shutdown—the longest in U.S. history—that ended in November when eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to reopen the government.

As part of that deal, Republicans promised a vote on extending the enhanced premium tax credits by the middle of December. Alaska’s senators say they’re still working on extensions, but they only have until December 31.

Senate Democrats will be forcing a vote next week on a plan to extend enhanced premium tax credits, or the subsidies in question, for three years, NBC’s Sahil Kapur reports.

“Republicans have one week to decide where they stand: Vote for this bill and bring health care costs down, or block this bill and send premiums skyrocketing,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said on the Senate floor Thursday. “That’s what’s at stake when we vote next week. It’s going to be one of the most important votes we take.”

Across the aisle, though, its chances to survive a filibuster seem unlikely.

“I haven’t seen yet what the Dems are proposing. I don’t think we’re close to a 60-vote threshold yet,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, told NBC News on Tuesday.

In a statement to Alaska’s News Source, Murkowski, too, said she was dubious of its chances in the chamber.

“We have two problems in front of us that we need to resolve: the immediate spike in premiums Alaskans will face if we do not allow for some limited extension before the end of this year, and the need to address the ever-escalating cost of receiving basic health care,” she said.

“These are policy considerations that will take us more than a week to resolve. I’ve been working to bring my colleagues to the table to develop both short- and long-term solutions before Alaskans feel the impact of these premium increases in the new year.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said at an Anchorage Chamber of Commerce forum in November he supports “tapering down” the subsidies over time rather than an abrupt end.

“Senator Sullivan is working relentlessly with his Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle to extend ACA subsidies with necessary reforms before the end of the year,” spokesperson Amanda Coyne told Alaska’s News Source Thursday. “Senator Sullivan recognizes that because of the high cost of health care delivery in Alaska, thousands of small business owners, fishermen, entrepreneurs, and others across the state rely on those subsidies.”

Coyne did not say whether Sullivan supports the Democrats’ three-year extension plan.

All the while, President Donald Trump has backed a plan to send funding to individuals instead of insurance companies.

“THE ONLY HEALTHCARE I WILL SUPPORT OR APPROVE IS SENDING THE MONEY DIRECTLY BACK TO THE PEOPLE, WITH NOTHING GOING TO THE BIG, FAT, RICH INSURANCE COMPANIES, WHO HAVE MADE $TRILLIONS, AND RIPPED OFF AMERICA LONG ENOUGH,” Trump said in a social media post last week. “Congress, do not waste your time and energy on anything else.”

That plan, touted by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, proposes individuals receive credits, “directly to patients and empower them to manage their own health care decisions,” according to a press release from his office.

Alaska’s News Source contacted the entire delegation for comment Thursday. A spokesperson for Begich did not respond to multiple requests over several days.

Alaska impact

Healthcare premiums for about 28,000 Alaskans, roughly 4% of the state, could skyrocket if the subsidies expire, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Alaska’s Division of Insurance.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, told CNN Wednesday Alaska would be one of ten states hardest hit by the funding cut.

“We’re talking about tens of millions of people, including in many red states across the country,” Jeffries said. “In fact, the states that will be most impacted if the Affordable Care Act tax credits expire, are Republican run states. We’re talking about West Virginia, Wyoming, Alaska…”

Alaska’s News Source reached out to Jeffries’s office for specifics on his claim, though the request was made after his office hours in D.C.

Jeffries statements align with data from a Nov. 24 study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, showing that in many cases, Alaska, on average, has some of the highest percentage increases to how much premiums will cost if the subsidies expire.

The study shows 60-year-old Alaskans earning just above 401% of the federal poverty line ($78,396 annually) could see their premiums increase by 295%. The average premium without these subsidies would become $2,192 monthly, consuming 34% of their yearly income.

In this age and income group, Alaska is the fourth highest increase, the first being Wyoming at 421%, West Virginia at 413% and Connecticut at 316%.

“I think we’re going to need to have a short-term extension‚” Murkowski said at the Wednesday committee meeting. “But I think we can put reasonable caps on it … But we’ve got to be looking longer term to how do we ultimately reduce these costs of care.”

The enhanced premium tax credits, which provide more generous subsidies than the original Affordable Care Act and extend eligibility, began during the pandemic and were extended in 2022. They are set to expire at the end of 2025 if Congress does not extend them again.

The subsidies were at the core of the recent 43-day government shutdown, with Senate Democrats forcing the closure to try and extend the credits. Alaska’s entire congressional delegation has publicly said they support extending the subsidies.

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This year, Alaska celebrates 70 years since our state constitution was created. And yet the official state seal that was adopted then fails to acknowledge Alaska’s Indigenous identities and all of our state’s resources.

State seals are official symbols used to visually represent a state by featuring images and text meant to resonate with the history, values and identity of the state.

Every time you cast a ballot, or every time an official law or proclamation is issued, the Alaska state seal is on that document. The lieutenant governor is responsible for the official use of the seal. It is found on the walls of the state capitol and legislative offices, but sometimes it seems to be hidden in plain sight.

After Alaska was purchased from Russia, Alaska’s seal featured Indigenous figures fishing and harvesting marine mammals.

And yet in 1910, the territorial governor redesigned the seal, erasing the Alaska Native representation and shifting focus to Alaska’s mining, timber, seafood and agriculture resources.

This is the same seal that represents Alaska today. Fun fact: The mining resource on the seal is represented by a smoking ore smelter. But the only smelter in Alaska is the symbol on the state seal; all mined ore is shipped to smelters Outside.

Indigenous people were the first people and deserve to be acknowledged on the seal. Native cultural symbols and art make up some of the most recognizable and significant visual imagery in our state.

Additionally, 2027 will mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the trans-Alaska pipeline. Oil production has revolutionized Alaska’s economic and sociocultural landscape, bringing over $300 billion in revenue to the state since the pipeline opened.

The current official seal has elements representing the state’s bounty of resources. But Alaska’s oil, the biggest resource bounty for the past 50 years, is not. It should be represented on the seal.

Benny Benson designed Alaska’s flag as part of a territory-wide competition for students in 1927. His new flag represented hope for the future of our beautiful land. Like the flag, our state seal should represent all the people in the state, and Alaska’s past, present and dreams of its future.

To policymakers, educators and tribal leaders: With the 70th anniversary of statehood coming in 2029, maybe it’s time we have another state competition. This time, it will be for our seal.

Dave Norton is an engineer from Anchorage. He is a board member of the Alaska Oil & Gas Historical Society.

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[Related: Anchorage Assembly reveals options for new city seal with Dena’ina designs]

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The Anchorage Daily News welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.

Too many residents, business owners and politicians of Southcentral Alaska — we’re talking the state’s population center of Anchorage, the Mat-Su and Kenai Peninsula — are all agog in anticipation that a multibillion-dollar North Slope natural gas pipeline will save them from unaffordable heating and electric bills.

It’s the time of year for holiday dreams — a warm tradition like Hallmark movies, grandma’s cookies and the Budweiser Clydesdales. But the wintry cold truth about this dream is that there will be no pipeline under the tree — just bits of tinsel left over from premature and misleading celebrations.

The megaproject is too costly and too risky in a world that has plenty of easier and cheaper gas to sell. It has uncertain construction costs, with public estimates ranging from roughly $40 to $44 billion; no binding long-term customer contracts to provide collateral for loans; no binding financial commitments from investors; and actually no gas under firm contract to sell. Other than that, it’s a great holiday package, with the lead promoter publicly talking of delivering a construction decision before the holiday season is over.

Yet many still want to believe it’s possible, preferring to perpetuate the warm holiday glow of bountiful gas, plentiful jobs and wishful thinking of billions of dollars flowing into the state treasury.

But while the notion of a pipeline delivering North Slope gas to Southcentral boilers, furnaces and power plants is consuming much of the air in the convention hall of big ideas, Southcentral utilities face the real prospect of running short of gas before the end of the decade, as Cook Inlet production declines.

Which means those utilities would need to import gas — supercooled into a liquid and delivered by tanker from Canada or elsewhere. Which means spending money to build an import facility. Which means charging ratepayers for the investment.

That’s the immediate problem, not waiting for a pipeline to come to the rescue.

Southcentral’s largest electric utility, Chugach Electric Association, is negotiating with Harvest Midstream, an affiliate of Cook Inlet oil and gas producer Hilcorp, which plans to restore operations at the unused gas export terminal in Nikiski and turn it into an import hub. It’s a low-cost, low-risk plan — with federal authorization in hand — to use the existing dock and storage tanks to help keep the state’s population center warm and well-lit.

However, the same project developer that wants to build the North Slope project, a company named Glenfarne, thinks it has a better backup answer before its pipeline arrives. It proposes to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a gas import terminal from scratch. Southcentral gas utility ENSTAR is in on the plan.

The Glenfarne/ENSTAR project not only lacks approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, it hasn’t even applied for authorization. Glenfarne has talked of spending tens of millions of dollars just getting to a construction decision. Then more spending, and years, before it could start importing gas.

All of the Southcentral utilities need to get their collective acts together and use the lowest-cost, fastest-to-develop, most certain option to ensure their customers have the gas they need. That is repurposing the existing export plant into an import terminal.

Building an entirely new facility for a small customer base is as wasteful as spending more public money on an unaffordable gas pipeline.

Any bad spending decisions by the utilities could fall on ratepayers to cover, or the state to bail out. Alaska has made a lot of poor decisions about energy over the years. We don’t need one more.

Larry Persily is a longtime Alaska journalist, with breaks for federal, state and municipal public policy work in Alaska and Washington, D.C. He lives in Anchorage and is the publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel weekly newspaper.

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The Anchorage Daily News welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.