On Thursday, Congress voted along party lines to confirm Dr. Mehmet Oz, the heart surgeon turned ill-informed TV talk show host, making him the person in charge of the largest health insurance program in the country.
And this appointment might be dumber than WWE Superstar Linda McMahon running the Education Department.
I mean who could forget Dr. Oz, who rose to fame on the back of Oprah Winfrey in the 1990s, and the hogwash he kept spouting during the coronavirus pandemic? It was Dr. Oz who kept pushing for Americans to take hydroxychloroquine and then we learned later that the famed doctor owned shares in the company that makes hydroxychloroquine.
And this is the person that will be overseeing the insurance coverage of some 160 million people.
From Politico:
He will have oversight over how physicians are paid through Medicare, which often sets a standard commercial insurers follow, and he will oversee more than $1.5 trillion in federal spending across Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges.
Oz will have to navigate complex regulatory issues with fewer staff than his predecessors due to a massive reorganization launched by HHS on Tuesday that saw 10,000 people lose their jobs.
It remains unclear how many people are affected within CMS. Originally the agency announced 300 people were fired but the impact will be felt across numerous government programs. For instance, HHS cut staff at the Office of Minority Health and closed five regional offices that assisted states and community groups with Medicare issues.
But I’m sure Dr. Oz knows what he’s doing since he spent from 2009 through 2022 hosting a daytime television show. And what does that have to do with Medicaid and Medicare you ask? Not a damn thing but I’m trying to be positive.
If this sham of a presidency and the fools he’s picked to ruin critical departments isn’t bad enough, all of this comes at a time when the Trump administration is convinced that there are huge amounts of waste, fraud and abuse within the healthcare system. We’ve seen how horribly that’s gone with the federal government.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this point, but I must remind you that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services operates under the Department of Health and Human Services, which is led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
I can’t. It literally just keeps getting worse.
Dr. Oz left his talk show to try his hand at politics running for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania and promptly lost to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Politico reports.
Now that Dr. Oz has been confirmed by a 53-45 vote, we can look for him to lead things like Medicaid reform, which House Republicans have been desperately trying to gut. The House GOP has ordered the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has governance over Medicaid, to cut $880 billion, an impossible figure to reach without cuts to Medicaid and Medicare.
Good thing we’ve got Dr. Oz to protect us.
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