Prospective CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, MD, has been a major proponent of Medicare Advantage, and has pitched expanding the program to extend coverage to all Americans. [Becker's Payer Issues]
President-elect Donald Trump nominated Dr. Oz, a television personality and professor emeritus of cardiothoracic surgery at Columbia University, to lead CMS on Nov. 19.
After hosting the daytime talk series "The Dr. Oz Show" from 2009 to 2022, Dr. Oz earned the nomination for the Pennsylvania Republican party for the U.S. Senate. He was defeated by Democrat John Fetterman.
Dr. Oz has previously backed "Medicare Advantage for All," a proposal to expand the Medicare Advantage program beyond older adults to everyone.
Here are five things to know about Dr. Oz's record on Medicare Advantage:
- In an op-ed published in Forbes in July 2020, Dr. Oz and former Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson proposed expanding Medicare Advantage plans to everyone not already enrolled in Medicaid. They proposed rebranding the program as "Medical Advantage," and funding coverage for all citizens through a 20% payroll tax.
In the article, Dr. Oz and Mr. Halvorson argued universal Medicare Advantage could eliminate Medicare fraud as a government expense and reduce administrative costs.
"The complex array of payers in our hodgepodge payment nonsystem that has created a massive administrative burden would shrink significantly — and once instituted, the universal Medicare Advantage plans should be obligated to reduce excess administrative costs by a third," Dr. Oz and Mr. Halvorson wrote in 2020.
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