The Senate confirms Mehmet Oz to take the homework of the Medicare and Medicaid agency

By Amanda Seitz

Washington (AP) – Former heart surgeon and television pitchman, Dr. Mehmet Oz, was confirmed on Thursday to direct the centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Oz became the administrator of the agency in a party line 53-45 votes.

The 64 -year -old man will manage health insurance programs for about half of the country, with monitoring of Medicare, Medicaid or affordable care. He goes into the new role while the congress debates cuts on the Medicaid program, which offers coverage to millions of poor and disabled Americans.

Oz has not yet said if he would oppose such cuts to the government financed by the government, rather offering a vision of the promotion of healthier lifestyles, the integration of artificial intelligence and telehealth in the system and rethinking the provision of rural health care.

During a hearing last month, he told the senators that he was in favor of the work requirements for the beneficiaries of Medicaid, but the documents should not be used to reaffirm that they work or to prevent people from remaining registered.

Oz, who has worked for years a cardiac surgeon respected at Columbia University, also noted that doctors do not like Medicaid for his relatively low payments and that some do not want to take these patients.

He said that when Medicaid’s eligibility has been extended without improving resources for doctors, making care even thinner care options for the main patients in the program, who include children, pregnant women and disabled people.

“We have to make important decisions to improve the quality of care,” he said.

Oz has established a close relationship with his new boss, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He organized the Secretary of Health and his inner circle regularly at home in Florida. He relied on the Kennedy campaign to “make America in good health again”, an effort to rethink the country’s food supply, reject the mandates of vaccines and question long -standing established scientific research.

The old television program often talks about the importance of a healthy diet, lining up closely with Kennedy’s opinions.

While some criticisms have faced to promote unbevened vitamins supplements and holistic treatments – basic foods of “Maha movement” – he regularly encouraged Americans to be vaccinated.

Oz will take up CMS a few days after the agency was spared the type of deep cuts that Kennedy ordered in other public health agencies. Thousands of staff members of the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the National Institutes for Health are unemployed after the mass layoffs that began on Tuesday.

CMS should lose around 300 employees, including those who have worked on minority health and to reduce the cost of providing health care.

Originally published: April 3, 2025 at 2:04 p.m.