Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers from Dr. Mehmet Oz on his past push to eliminate traditional Medicare in favor of private insurers.
Led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the senators wrote a letter to Oz on Tuesday “regarding our concerns about your advocacy for the elimination of Traditional Medicare and your deep financial ties to private health insurers.”
Oz, a TV personality and former GOP Senate candidate, was selected by President-elect Donald Trump to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS oversees coverage for over 155 million Americans. Medicare, with 67 million enrolled, accounts for about $1 trillion in annual spending.
“We have questions about your lack of qualifications for this job: although you were a renowned heart surgeon, you have no management experience relevant to running these critical healthcare programs. But we are equally concerned about your previous advocacy for Medicare privatization,” they wrote.
The letter was also signed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who will be the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees the nominations for CMS. The questions introduced in the letter serve as a starting point for what the committee might be inclined to ask during the confirmation process.
“Your advocacy for eliminating the Traditional Medicare program and replacing it with Medicare Advantage also raises questions about your own financial conflicts of interest,” the Democrats wrote in the letter. “In your financial disclosures from your 2022 Senate run, you reported owning over $550,000 of stock in UnitedHealth, the largest private insurer in Medicare Advantage and largest employer of physicians in the nation.”
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“The company is currently under a sprawling antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice — including for its role in aggressively upcoding Medicare Advantage enrollees to secure higher payments from CMS — and has been sued on multiple occasions for Medicare fraud. Under your plan, UnitedHealth’s revenue from Medicare Advantage would roughly double to $274 billion annually,” they added.
The lawmakers asked multiple questions in the letter, but they once again pointed to the possible conflict of interest, asking if he’ll “commit to fully divesting of any and all financial holdings related to the insurance industry if you are confirmed as administrator.”