Former heart surgeon and TV pitchman Dr Mehmet Oz was confirmed on Thursday to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Oz became the agency’s administrator in a party-line 53-45 vote.
The 64-year-old will manage health insurance programs for roughly half the country, with oversight of Medicare, Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage. He steps into the new role as Congress is debating cuts to the Medicaid program, which provides coverage to millions of poor and disabled Americans.
Oz has not said yet whether he would oppose such cuts to the government-funded program, instead offering a vision of promoting healthier lifestyles, integrating artificial intelligence and telehealth into the system, and rethinking rural healthcare delivery.
During a hearing last month, he told senators that he did favor work requirements for Medicaid recipients, but that paperwork shouldn’t be used to reaffirm that they are working or to block people from staying enrolled.
Oz, who worked for years as a respected heart surgeon at Columbia University, also noted that doctors dislike Medicaid for its relatively low payments and some don’t want to take those patients.
He said that when Medicaid eligibility was expanded without improving resources for doctors, that made care options even thinner for the program’s core patients, which include children, pregnant people and people with disabilities.
“We have to make some important decisions to improve the quality of care,” he said.
Oz has formed a close relationship with his new boss, Robert F Kennedy Jr. He’s hosted the health secretary and his inner circle regularly at his home in Florida. He’s leaned into Kennedy’s campaign to “make America healthy again” (Maha), an effort to redesign the country’s food supply, reject vaccine mandates and cast doubt on some long-established scientific research.
The former TV show host talks often about the importance of a healthy diet, aligning closely with Kennedy’s views.
While Oz has faced some criticism for promoting unproven vitamin supplements and holistic treatments – staples of the “Maha movement” – he’s regularly encouraged Americans to get vaccinated.
Oz will take over the CMS days after the agency was spared from the type of deep cuts that Kennedy ordered at other public health agencies. Thousands of staffers at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes for Health are out of a job after mass layoffs that started on Tuesday.
The CMS is expected to lose about 300 staffers, including those who worked on minority health and to shrink the cost of healthcare delivery.
Separately on Thursday, a federal judge will temporarily block Donald Trump’s administration from cutting billions in federal dollars that support Covid-19 initiatives and public health projects throughout the country.
US district Judge Mary McElroy, appointed by the US president in 2019 but first nominated by Barack Obama, in Rhode Island said that she plans to grant the court order sought by 23 states and the District of Columbia.
“They make a case, a strong case, for the fact that they will succeed on the merits, so I’m going to grant the temporary restraining order,” said McElroy, who plans to issue a written ruling later.
The states’ lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, sought to immediately stop the $11bn in cuts. The money was allocated by Congress during the pandemic and mostly used for Covid-related initiatives, as well as for mental health and substance use efforts. The lawsuit said losing the money would devastate US public health infrastructure, putting states “at greater risk for future pandemics and the spread of otherwise preventable disease and cutting off vital public health services”.
The US Department of Health and Human Services has defended the decision, saying that the money was being wasted since the pandemic is over.
