Latest news with #DrMehmetOz
The Independent
15-07-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Dr. Oz offers strange health advice to Americans facing Medicaid cuts
Dr. Mehmet Oz, an administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told Americans on Medicaid to not "eat carrot cake" and "eat real food" amidst significant cuts to their government-funded health insurance. The advice followed Donald Trump signing legislation that extended his 2017 tax cuts and increased border security funding, while simultaneously cutting Medicaid and the food assistance programme SNAP. Under Trump's legislation, some Medicaid recipients will be required to regularly file paperwork proving they are working, in school, or volunteering for at least 80 hours a month. Estimates suggest that up to 7.8 million Americans could be cut from Medicaid by 2034 due to these changes, according to a Reuters report citing the Congressional Budget Office. Oz defended the cuts by citing "fraud, waste and abuses" and suggested that able-bodied individuals should work, drawing criticism from figures like Senator Elizabeth Warren.
The Independent
14-07-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Dr. Oz tells Americans on Medicaid ‘don't eat carrot cake' as millions face health insurance cuts
Dr. Mehmet Oz, former TV personality and current administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told Americans on Medicaid, 'Don't eat carrot cake,' as millions face cuts to their government-funded health insurance. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which extended his 2017 tax cuts and increased border security funding while making cuts to Medicaid and the food assistance program SNAP. Under Trump's legislation, some Americans on Medicaid will need to regularly file paperwork proving they are working, in school or volunteering at least 80 hours a month, NPR reported. There have been several estimates flying around about how many Americans will lose their Medicaid. Reuters reported, citing the Congressional Budget Office, 7.8 million Americans could be cut from Medicaid by 2034. Fox Business' Stuart Varney and Oz were celebrating the 60th anniversary of Medicare, government-funded healthcare primarily for elderly Americans, on Monday. Varney asked Oz on his show, '11 million people would lose their coverage because of the changes to Medicaid. That's gonna be a political problem for you, isn't it?' 'I don't believe that number is correct,' Oz said, adding, 'Medicare and Medicaid are the backbone of the social safety net of our country. We must preserve these entities.' Oz said Medicaid was addressed in Trump's bill because of 'fraud, waste and abuses,' without providing any concrete evidence. 'If you're able-bodied and able to work and you're not, on average you're spending 6.1 hours a day watching television or just hanging out…so we're saying, you oughta try to go to work,' Oz added. Later in their conversation, Oz told Varney, 'We'll be there for you, the American people, when you need help with Medicaid and Medicare, but you gotta stay healthy as well.' 'Do the most you can do to really live up to your God-given potential to live a full and healthy life. Don't eat carrot cake. Eat real food,' he said, referring to a carrot cake he brought to Varney's set to celebrate Medicare's 60th anniversary.
New York Times
27-06-2025
- Health
- New York Times
With Flu Shot Vote, Kennedy's Vaccine Skepticism Comes Full Circle
A decade before he became President Trump's health secretary, the environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on a talk show hosted by Dr. Mehmet Oz to promote his latest book, 'Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak.' The book, published in 2014, explored an obscure mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, that was removed from most vaccines, but not flu vaccines, more than two decades ago. Dr. Oz noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had deemed the vaccines that still contained thimerosal 'safe and effective' and said they did 'not present a public health risk.' Mr. Kennedy did not buy it. 'We found 500 peer-reviewed studies,' he insisted. 'Virtually every one of them said that thimerosal is a potent neurotoxin that should not be in vaccines.' On Thursday, the new members of the C.D.C.'s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, hand-selected by Mr. Kennedy after he fired all 17 members of the previous panel, decided it would longer recommend annual flu shots that contain it. Thimerosal's appearance on the committee's agenda in the first place shocked public health leaders, who have long considered the matter settled. But it was not a surprise to people who have followed Mr. Kennedy closely. Thimerosal started Mr. Kennedy down a path of questioning vaccine safety, and Thursday's vote was the culmination of a long personal journey. It offers a window into how, as secretary, he is pursuing his own passions and installing old allies in positions of influence. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
23-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
RFK Jr and Dr Oz announce insurers' ‘pledge' to reform prior authorization
The US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and Dr Mehmet Oz announced a voluntary agreement with insurance companies to change prior authorization practices – where private health insurers require patients to ask for permission before they can receive medical treatment. The majority of Americans get health insurance through a private company, whether through an employer, or a privatization of public health insurance programs, such as Medicare Advantage. Prior authorization is an insurance company practice that is both common and abhorred. There are whole social media accounts devoted to egregious examples of it, campaigns for change built around it, and, in Oz's words, there is 'violence in the streets' over prior authorization – an allusion to the broad daylight killing of an insurance company CEO. Oz said repeatedly in a press conference on Monday that 85% of Americans or their loved ones had experienced a delay or denial of care thanks to prior authorization. 'The pledge is not a mandate, this is not a bill or rule – this is an opportunity for industry to show itself,' said Oz, who heads the enormous federal health insurance bureaucracy, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). CMS oversees the health insurance of about 68 million seniors through Medicare and about 71 million low-income and disabled Americans through Medicaid. 'It's a good start,' said Oz, 'and the response has been overwhelming.' Kennedy called the agreement 'momentous' and said it would help make the health system, 'work to make our country healthy again'. The announcement of voluntary measures echoed one made earlier in the year by Kennedy, who announced the administration had an 'understanding' with food companies to phase out synthetic dyes. Food companies later told reporters there was no agreement. Concurrently, Republicans are working to push a bill through Congress that is expected to result in at least 16 million Americans losing health insurance in the next decade. The bill would add red tape to Medicaid and, advocates say, 'punish' states that expanded care to the low-income. With Biblical references and a bullet point chart, Trump administration officials, two Republican members of Congress and even an actor who played a doctor on TV – Eric Dane of Grey's Anatomy – laid out their hopes for insurers to implement this voluntary agreement that they said covered 275 million Americans. Should they do so, insurers would work to standardize the prior authorization approval and deliver decisions faster and near real-time (not over the course of, say, weeks). Additionally, insurers would reduce the number of procedures and drugs subject to prior authorization, honor existing prior authorization approvals in the event a patient switches insurers in the course of care and build a 'public dashboard' of how the industry is doing which would allow 'medical professionals' to review every denial. Notably, insurance companies made a similar pledge to doctors, hospitals and Americans in 2018, during the first Trump administration. In a press release announcing that agreement, insurers pledged to work with doctors and hospitals to 'eliminate' prior authorization for some procedures, 'minimize care delays' and 'protect continuity of care for patients'. By 2022, the American Medical Association (AMA), which signed onto that agreement, was arguing publicly that insurers failed to live up to their end of the bargain. A 2023 survey by the AMA of 1,000 doctors found 7% of physicians had a prior authorization lead to 'a patient's disability or permanent bodily damage, congenital anomaly or birth defect or death'. Trump administration officials did acknowledge that the practice could be egregious and warranted change. 'A vaginal delivery,' often requires prior authorization, said the Trump administration Medicare director Chris Klomp, 'Why is that a question mark in this day and age?' The insurance industry often argues insurers 'target its use' to prevent wasteful testing by doctors. However, prior authorization is known to be incredibly widespread: in 2023, a spokesperson for a lobbying group told FierceHealthcare that 93% of beneficiaries were in plans that required prior authorization for nearly a quarter of services. Beneficiaries of the federal privatization program Medicare Advantage, which allows private health insurers to manage beneficiaries of the public program Medicare (and is widely regarded as more expensive for taxpayers), issued about two prior authorization requests for every one of its 32 million beneficiaries in 2023, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The practice has even spawned cottage industries: a ProPublica investigation found one company contracted by major insurers sold a product called 'the dial' that used an algorithm backed by artificial intelligence to control denial rates. Unlike the federal government, some states have found the nerve to legislate. In just one example, New Jersey required insurers to turn decisions around faster, required peer-to-peer conversations between doctors about the insurers' decision and required insurers to share denial rates and reasons – at least some of which one Republican congressman at the dais said he wanted, but was not in the agreement. 'I will say this being a surgeon: I'm a skeptic, the proof is going to be in the pudding,' said Dr Greg Murphy, a Republican from North Carolina, who added that he would be open to regulations, but questioned whether insurers would abide by the agreement: 'Are they doing something to placate an audience?'
Fox News
23-06-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Top Trump health official slams Democrats for 'misleading' claims about Medicaid reform
FIRST ON FOX: A top Trump White House official is looking to undercut Senate Democrats' talking points on Medicaid, arguing that the GOP's plan to reform the healthcare program would benefit rural hospitals, not harm them. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz told Fox News Digital that "special interests are pushing misleading talking points to try and stop the most ambitious healthcare reforms ever." Oz's sentiment comes as Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate Republicans sprint to finish their work on President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" ahead of a self-imposed July 4 deadline. Part of the bill from the Senate Finance Committee aims to make good on the GOP's promise to root out waste, fraud and abuse within the widely used healthcare program by including work requirements and booting illegal immigrants from benefit rolls, among other measures. Tweaks to the Medicaid provider tax rate have ruffled feathers on both sides of the aisle. Indeed, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., sent a letter to Trump and the top congressional Republicans last week warning that changes to the Medicaid provider tax rate would harm over 300 rural hospitals. And a cohort of Senate Republicans were furious with the change after the bill dropped last week. But Oz contended that "only 5%" of inpatient Medicaid spending happens in rural communities, and that the mammoth bill "instead targets abuses overwhelmingly utilized by large hospitals with well-connected lobbyists." "We are committed to preserving and improving access to care in rural communities with a transformative approach that bolsters advanced technology, invests in infrastructure, and supports workforce — rather than propping up a system that mostly benefits wealthier urban areas," Oz said. Schumer's letter included data from a study recently conducted by the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at his behest. He warned that if the bill is passed as is, millions of people would be kicked off of their healthcare coverage, and "rural hospitals will not get paid for the services they are required by law to provide to patients." Fox News Digital reached out to Schumer, Wyden and Merkley for comment. However, another report from the Trump-aligned Paragon Health Institute argued similarly to Oz that special interest groups and healthcare lobbyists were "flooding the airwaves with claims" that Republicans' changes to Medicaid would shutter rural hospitals. For example, they argued that a recent report from the Center for American Progress warned that over 200 rural hospitals would be at risk of closure, but that the findings were based on changes to the federal medical assistance percentage, or the amount of Medicaid costs paid for by the federal government. Changes to that percentage were mulled by congressional Republicans but were not included in the "big, beautiful bill." Still, the changes to the Medicaid provider tax rate, which were a stark departure from the House GOP's version of the bill, angered the Republicans who have warned not to make revisions to the healthcare program that could shut down rural hospitals and boot working Americans from their benefits. The Senate Finance Committee went further than the House's freeze of the provider tax rate, or the amount that state Medicaid programs pay to healthcare providers on behalf of Medicaid beneficiaries, for non-Affordable Care Act expansion states, and included a provision that lowers the rate in expansion states annually until it hits 3.5%. However, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is working on a possible change to the bill that would create a provider relief fund that could sate her and other Republicans' concerns about the change to the provider tax rate.
