Mehmet Oz once proposed massive changes to Medicare. Now he could run it.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, Donald Trump's pick to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, has evolved on health care policy over the years.
WASHINGTON — When President-elect Donald Trump picked Dr. Mehmet Oz for a powerful executive branch job overseeing Medicare, incoming Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, quickly praised the TV-famous physician and said he looked forward to considering his coming nomination.
“Far too often, patients relying on federal government health care programs are forced to accept bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all coverage,” Crapo said. “Dr. Oz has been an advocate for providing consumers with the information necessary to make their own health care decisions.”
It turns out that Oz, Trump's pick to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, endorsed something of a one-size-fits-all plan for health care just four years ago.
Oz co-wrote a Forbes piece in June 2020 with former Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson endorsing a “Medicare Advantage for All” system that called for eliminating employer-provided insurance and Affordable Care Act coverage and putting “every American who is not on Medicaid” into Medicare Advantage, which uses private plans to cover enrollees. They proposed to fund it with a 20% payroll tax split between employers and workers.
“It’s perhaps ironic that this proposal to provide universal coverage through private Medicare Advantage plans bears a striking resemblance to Kamala Harris’ 'Medicare for All' proposal during the 2020 campaign,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the nonpartisan research group KFF.
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