Dr. Mehmet Oz, the center surgeon turned daytime tv star, has a brand new job — overseeing the nation’s largest medical health insurance packages.
The chamber voted Thursday 53 to 45 alongside get together strains to substantiate Oz to steer the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Providers. Oz, who has touted controversial therapies and pushed unproven theories about Covid-19 cures together with hydroxychloroquine, will make and implement main selections impacting the insurance coverage protection of greater than 160 million folks.
He could have oversight over how physicians are paid via Medicare, which regularly units a typical industrial insurers observe, and he’ll oversee greater than $1.5 trillion in federal spending throughout Medicare, Medicaid and the Inexpensive Care Act’s insurance coverage exchanges.
Oz should navigate advanced regulatory points with fewer employees than his predecessors due to an enormous reorganization launched by HHS on Tuesday that noticed 10,000 folks lose their jobs.
It stays unclear how many individuals are affected inside CMS. Initially the company introduced 300 folks have been fired however the influence will likely be felt throughout quite a few authorities packages. As an illustration, HHS lower employees on the Workplace of Minority Well being and closed 5 regional workplaces that assisted states and neighborhood teams with Medicare points.
Oz hosted a well-liked daytime tv present from 2009 via 2022, when he left to run for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat. He misplaced that race to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).
Oz mentioned wellness points on the present and landed in sizzling water greater than a decade in the past for selling deceptive remedies, resulting in a contentious listening to again in 2014 earlier than a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee.
Now that he’s confirmed, Oz would be the administration’s entrance man on key points akin to Medicaid reform. Home Republicans on the Vitality and Commerce Committee are in search of $880 billion in financial savings for a bigger spending bundle, and a few lawmakers have their sights set on Medicaid, which they imagine is bloated and rife with waste and abuse.
