WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — Former TV personality and onetime U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz could become the next administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an expansive government agency that is responsible for large swaths of the country’s health care.
President-elect Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Oz on Tuesday, writing in a statement “there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again.”
Oz won the Republican primary in the 2022 Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race but was defeated during the general election by Democratic Sen. John Fetterman.
Trump wrote that Oz would “work closely” with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will be nominated for Health and Human Services secretary, “to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”
“He 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,” Trump wrote in the announcement.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services manages the country’s largest health care programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, and the health insurance marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
There are 67.7 million people enrolled in Medicare, with nearly 90% of those enrollees over the age of 65. The program also provides health care coverage for younger people with severe illnesses or disabilities.
Medicaid, a state-federal program that provides health coverage for low-income people, has about 72.4 million enrollees.
There are 7.1 million CHIP program participants.
And 21.3 million people purchased health insurance through the ACA marketplace during the 2024 open enrollment period.
When added together, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services provides health care coverage to 1 in 4 Americans, according to its latest financial report.
The agency spent about $1.516 trillion during the last fiscal year and has more than 6,700 federal employees as well as contractors to handle the workload.
“CMS and its contractors process over one billion Medicare claims annually, monitor quality of care, provide the states with matching funds for Medicaid benefits, and develop policies and procedures designed to give the best possible service to beneficiaries,” according to the report.
“CMS also assures the safety and quality of medical facilities, provides health insurance protection to workers changing jobs, and maintains the largest collection of healthcare data in the United States.”
Oz received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University before earning a joint M.D. and MBA from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Wharton Business School.
He starred in the daytime show “Dr. Oz,” which ran from 2009 until 2022.
Oz’s nomination is subject to Senate confirmation and is under the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee, currently led by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo.
Oz’s confirmation hearing won’t be the first time he’s testified before a Senate committee. More than 10 years ago, he testified in front of a Senate panel that his comments on his TV show about certain weight loss supplements were “flowery.”
