Dr. Oz grilled on Medicaid at confirmation hearing

Mehmet Oz, the celebrity quack doctor, faced his Senate confirmation hearing on Friday as he seeks to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. And he refused to promise he won’t help the Republican Party slash Medicaid.

“Since you cherish Medicaid, will you agree to oppose cuts in the Medicaid program?” asked Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon.

“I cherish Medicaid, and I’ve worked within the Medicaid environment quite extensively, as I highlighted, practicing at Columbia University,” Oz replied. 

Wyden shot back: “That’s not that question, doctor. The question is, will you oppose cuts to this program you say you cherish?”

Dodging the question again, Oz said, “I want to make sure that patients today and in the future have resources to protect them if they get ill. The way you protect Medicaid is by making sure that it’s viable at every level, which includes having enough practitioners to afford the services, paying them enough to do what you request of them, and making sure that patients are able to actually use Medicaid.”

For the record, it was a yes/no question.

Later, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts brought up a popular phrase—“waste, fraud, and abuse”—and referred to the issue of insurance scams in Medicare where insurers have been notoriously pocketing millions of taxpayer dollars through “upcoding.” For instance, The Wall Street Journal found that insurers were pocketing $50 billion in Medicare by giving patients fake diagnoses. 

“If you had the choice, would you rather cut waste, fraud, and abuse by a Fortune 50 health insurance company in Medicare Advantage, or cut funding for Medicaid, which covers half of all seniors in nursing homes and 1 in 3 of America’s children?” Warren asked.

"My goal is to improve the health care of the American people,” Oz replied, “and as you create the argument, the former sounds like the more rational way to do that.”

Oz has his own multimillion-dollar investments in the health care sector, which had senators like Warren concerned prior to the hearing. In a 2020 op-ed in Forbes, he outlined a plan to privatize Medicare Advantage, which appeared as a conflict of interest given the celebrity doctor’s personal investments in companies that might get a piece of the pie. In February, responding to the resurfaced op-ed, Oz said that he would sell most of his stocks in these companies should he get nominated. 

But his confirmation also brought back some skeletons in the daytime talk show host’s closet.

Around the time of his unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 2022, Oz’s dealings with supplement company Usana came to light. Oz became a spokesperson for the company, peddling the products on his talk show and speaking at events. However, some of the products were later found to have unsafe levels of lead. 

The doctor cut ties with the products prior to his run for Senate. 

Of course, he’s not the only Trump nominee with shady grifts in their past. If confirmed, Oz will work under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now running the Department of Health and Human Services. 

With measles cases rising and two reported deaths, Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján of Arizona seemed hesitant to sign off on another of Trump’s appointees so fast. 

“My colleagues and I have written twice to the secretary of health and human services to do more to address measles. There’s not been a response,” he said, then seemed to rhetorically ask Oz if he would make the same promise RFK Jr. failed to keep.

Speaking to RFK Jr. directly, Luján said, “Secretary, if you’re watching today, respond to the damn letter. People are dying.”