As Real Public Health Experts Are Purged, Dr. Oz Gets Confirmed to Key Health Department Role
Oz will serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, overseeing a $1.5 trillion budget and insurance coverage for more than 160 million Americans.
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Capping off a week where Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired nearly 7,000 employees in his department, on Thursday, the Senate confirmed Dr. Oz—the reality TV star and failed GOP Senate candidate in Pennsylvania—to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) by a 53-45, party line vote. Don’t worry, America: Kennedy may have terminated the career civil servants and public health experts staving off the next pandemic…but our access to health insurance is now in the hands of a famed, prolific dog-killer who, as recently as December, appeared to be violating federal guidelines to shill shady vitamins to teens on TikTok.
As the administrator of CMS, Oz, who opposed the Affordable Care Act on the 2022 campaign trail, now oversees a $1.5 trillion budget and insurance coverage for more than 160 million Americans covered through the ACA, Medicaid, Medicare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Medicaid is the primary source of payment for sexual and reproductive health services—it pays for 75% of family planning services and covers four in 10 births. And, based on what few answers Oz sprinkled among his countless non-answers during his confirmation hearing, we can deduce that he wants to strip as many people as possible from the program. At one hearing last month, Oz told senators he was interested in enforcing work requirements for Medicaid recipients, a thinly veiled threat to millions of low-income and disabled people’s access to health coverage. This comes at a time when the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are very publicly eyeing gutting Medicaid and Medicare, baselessly alleging widespread fraud.