By nominating Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Donald Trump has taken another disastrous step to sabotage Americans’ health care. A staunch MAGA loyalist, Dr. Oz has a close relationship with Trump’s extreme Health & Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., having promoted his dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on his show a decade ago. Like Trump, Dr. Oz is a shameless grifter and TV personality; he rose to fame promoting dozens of health scams on his show – including one that led to a multimillion-dollar class action settlement for false advertising. The American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics has called him “a dangerous rogue unfit for the office of America’s doctor.”
More than 160 million Americans depend on programs administered by CMS. Trump has given Dr. Oz a mandate to slash Medicaid and Medicare. In the past, Oz has pushed to gut Medicare and force seniors onto expensive privatized plans that limit what doctors they can see, deny them care, cost taxpayers more, and give $200 billion away annually to big insurance companies, pushing Medicare toward bankruptcy without improving care at all. He even opposes the Affordable Care Act, and he said he would have voted against it. With Dr. Oz and RFK Jr. overseeing the country’s health care sector, the second Trump administration will only lead us into chaos.
Dr. Oz Will Push To Gut Medicare and Push Seniors Onto Expensive Privatized Plans. As head of CMS, Oz would oversee Medicare, which covers over 67 million seniors and people with disabilities. In Trump’s announcement of his intention to appoint Oz as CMS administrator, he suggested cuts to Medicare would be on the table: “[Oz] will also cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget.” Republicans often cloak health care cuts as cutting “waste and abuse” while actually risking care for people who need it. Oz previously praised a plan from Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) which would have ended funding for all federal programs, including Medicare, in five years without Congressional action. In 2022, Oz also staked his Senate campaign on forcing millions of seniors off of traditional Medicare and onto privatized plans – a policy right out of Project 2025. He touted his plan as “Medicare Advantage For All,” even though these plans limit what doctors patients can see, deny patients care, cost taxpayers more, give $200 billion away annually to big insurance companies, and push Medicare towards bankruptcy. Experts estimate that if Medicare Advantage (MA) rose to 75 percent of Medicare enrollment, the program would waste nearly $2 trillion over 10 years on excess payments to these private plans “without any real improvement in health care quality for enrollees.” Even now, as lawmakers have worked to rein in overpayments, some MA plans are prioritizing shareholders over patients by decreasing benefits; of the 25 MA parent organizations by number of plan offerings, 76 percent are decreasing their offerings ahead of the upcoming open enrollment period. MA plans are also known to systematically underpay rural providers and deny coverage to rural Americans. Pushing seniors to MA plans would put rural hospitals at risk of closing and seniors at risk of losing access to care.
Dr. Oz Opposes The Affordable Care Act. After he launched his 2022 Senate campaign as a Republican, Oz called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) “wrong,” and said he “would not have voted for Obamacare.” As head of CMS, Oz would be responsible for implementing the ACA’s consumer protections and regulating state Health Insurance Marketplaces.
- Dr. Oz Believes “Americans Don’t Have The Right To Health.” In a 2013 speech to Republican governors, Oz proclaimed, “[Americans] don’t have the right to health, but they have a right to access — a chance to get that health,” revealing his belief that only Americans who can afford top-tier health insurance deserve quality care.
Dr. Oz Is A Staunch Trump Loyalist and “Friend” To RFK Jr. Oz has always been a Trump loyalist, receiving Trump’s endorsement during his 2022 Senate run after going to “extensive lengths to win over the former president” and his relationship with RFK Jr. goes back at least 10 years to when Oz hosted him on his TV show to spread anti-vaccine misinformation. After Trump announced his selection of Oz for CMS, RFK Jr. proudly posted on X, “Very excited that my friend @DrOz has agreed to run CMS. Thank you @realDonaldTrump for this outstanding nomination. Welcome Dr. Oz to The Avengers. Let’s Make America Healthy Again!”
Just Like RFK Jr., Dr. Oz Has Spent His Career Pushing Pseudoscience. Oz has a long record of grifting dietary supplements unsupported by scientific evidence and recommending at-home ailments based on alarming pseudoscience. In 2012, Oz claimed that selenium supplements were “the holy grail of cancer prevention,” with no scientific evidence to back the claim. Instead, studies have found that high rates of selenium intake can cause severe heart problems. In February 2012, Oz baselessly claimed that raspberry ketones were “the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat.” As the Public Affairs Council found, “There is a total lack of research on raspberry ketones’ effects on fat loss.” In 2014, Oz encouraged his followers to try using strawberries and baking soda to whiten teeth, even though studies have found that the mixture may harm tooth health. In 2015, Oz baselessly claimed that umckaloabo root extract was “incredibly effective at relieving cold symptoms,” even though the National Center for Biotechnology Information found that “there’s a lack of reliable studies on the benefits of these products.” In 2018, Oz tweeted a bizarre pseudoscientific claim that astrological signs “may reveal a great deal about our health.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, Oz even pushed unproven DIY treatments for the virus, publicly claiming that antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine could be an effective treatment.
Dr. Oz Pushed Dietary Supplements Falsely Promising Weight Loss, Leading To A Multi-Million Dollar False Advertising Settlement. In July 2018, Oz reached a $5.25 million legal settlement in a class action lawsuit against him for pushing green coffee extract dietary supplements he promised had weight loss benefits. On his TV show, Oz promised that the supplements were a “magic weight-loss cure” and “revolutionary fat buster” despite having no scientific evidence to back his claims. Oz testified before Congress on false advertising in the diet and weight-loss industry four years prior. During the hearing, Oz attempted to defend his products to no avail; as one Senator pointed out, “the scientific community is almost monolithic against you.”
Dr. Oz Holds Extreme Anti-Abortion Views. Oz made it clear he opposed Roe v. Wade’s federal abortion protections. During a 2022 debate, when asked about reproductive health care access, Oz declared, “There should not be involvement from the federal government in how states decide their abortion decisions…I want women, doctors, local political leaders, letting the democracy that’s always allowed our nation to thrive to put the best ideas forward so states can decide for themselves.”