Mehmet Oz, Trump’s nominee to run Medicare and Medicaid, will testify before a Senate committee Friday

Mehmet Oz is heading to Washington and straight to the hot seat.

The celebrity doctor and former Pennsylvania Senate candidate, nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), will testify before a committee of senators Friday.

The agency oversees the coordination and implementation of major health-care programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and the Affordable Care Act.

Taken together, CMS oversees health insurance coverage for nearly half of all Americans and a budget of about $1.5 trillion annually.

Oz is expected to face a grilling from Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, both on his personal financial holdings and on his support for Medicaid, as cuts to the program have become a major issue for the party following the passage of a GOP-backed budget resolution intent on slashing spending.

Every Trump cabinet nominee who has advanced to a hearing has been confirmed in the Senate, where Republicans have 53 seats to Democrats’ 47. And in the company of more controversial nominees, Oz might not be headed for a highly contested nomination. Still, Medicare and Medicaid have become key topics for Democrats, and the hearing falls on the same day as Congress’ deadline to fund the government to avoid a shutdown.

Oz, who ran for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022, still owns a house in Bryn Athyn, according to property records. He won Trump’s backing in a heated GOP primary that year over now-Sen. Dave McCormick.

Trump’s allegiance to Oz was further emphasized Tuesday when the president announced he was nominating Oz’s son-in-law, John Jovanovic, to head the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the country’s official export credit agency. Jovanovic, the chief strategy officer of the Willow Grove-based Asplundh Tree Expert LLC, is married to Oz’s daughter, celebrity chef and talk show host Daphne Oz.

The CMS administrator is not a cabinet-level position and will report to Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The position is not usually a household name, but has garnered particular interest this year due to Oz’s celebrity.

Oz, a heart surgeon who graduated from Harvard and Penn, rose to fame with frequent medical segments as a health expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show before spinning off his own daytime series, The Dr. Oz Show. He parlayed that into lucrative endorsement deals, frequent media appearances, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In the two years since losing his Senate bid to Democrat John Fetterman — a race Oz poured more than $27 million of his own money into — he has largely been off the political radar, hawking supplements as the global ambassador for the vitamin retailer iHerb on social media.

Now he’s back, and on track to become the man in charge of health care for 160 million Americans.

Here are some of the questions he will likely face.

Oz won’t have control over whether Congress cuts Medicaid — a likely scenario, according to a Congressional Budget Office review of the latest GOP-backed budget resolution. But he would have some clout to advocate for the program overseen by his agency, and some authority over how money is distributed within the program.

As the administrator of CMS, Oz would make decisions on how the government covers medical procedures, hospital stays, and medications under Medicaid and other programs. The agency also determines the reimbursement rates doctors and other providers receive for their services.

Look for Democrats to ask him repeatedly about his plans for the program.

Fetterman, who beat Oz in a campaign that was brutally personal at times, has said he would support Oz in the CMS role so long as he is convinced his former rival wants to preserve government health care.

“If Dr. Oz is about protecting and preserving Medicare and Medicaid, I’m voting for the dude,” the senator posted on X.

In Pennsylvania, Medicare covers more than 2.9 million seniors and disabled residents, while Medicaid and CHIP provide health and long-term care coverage to 3.1 million low-income children, pregnant women, adults, seniors, and people with disabilities in the state. In all, these programs cover more than 38% of the state’s population.

Key Democratic senators, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, sent a letter to Oz shortly after he was nominated, questioning his “previous advocacy for Medicare privatization” — referring to his call in 2020 to put all seniors into private insurance plans under Medicare Advantage.

“In the wake of that nomination, we write regarding our concerns about your advocacy for the elimination of Traditional Medicare and your deep financial ties to private health insurers,” the letter read.

The criticism stems from a 2020 proposal made by Oz and former Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson in a piece published in Forbes, where they suggested enrolling all Americans over 65 who were not in Medicaid into privately administered Medicare Advantage plans.

They framed the proposal as a way to provide universal coverage through the private sector, rather than expanding Medicare for all. But the Democratic senators said they worried the approach would subject seniors to price gouging.

“Private insurers that run the Medicare Advantage program drastically overcharge for care,” the senators wrote in the letter to Oz, citing analysis from the nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Committee.

As a Senate candidate in 2022, Oz continued to advocate for the expansion of Medicare Advantage, but he stopped short of calling for the elimination of traditional Medicare during the campaign. If confirmed, he would have the authority to expand privatization of the program, something many Republicans have urged. The program has gained popularity, with enrollments doubling since 2010.

His hearing could be a venue for both sides of the aisle to push for and against the private plans.

Democratic Sens. Warren and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois sent a second letter to Oz last month expressing concern regarding his views on women’s reproductive rights.

The letter referenced comments Oz made during his Pennsylvania Senate campaign, including perhaps his biggest gaffe when he said in the one and only debate that a woman’s reproductive health decisions should be up to “women, doctors, [and] local political leaders.” The quote prompted a slew of anti-Oz ads.

Warren and Duckworth also pointed to language on Oz’s campaign website from the race that described him as “100% Pro-Life,” and his praise for the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

The CMS oversees Medicare’s and Medicaid’s coverage of sexual and reproductive health services, which includes access to contraceptive services through the Affordable Care Act and, in cases where the mother’s life is at risk, emergency abortion care at Medicare-participating hospitals.

Lawmakers have also raised concerns about Oz’s financial interests in UnitedHealth, the largest private insurer in Medicare Advantage, as a conflict of interest and asked whether he would divest from any financial holdings related to the insurance industry if he is confirmed to the post.

A government ethics report filed in February highlighted more holdings and raised more questions. In the filing, Oz promised to divest from certain companies within three months of being confirmed and to abstain from participating in any matters that could affect his investments. The nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics signed off on the agreement.

Oz’s net worth, according to the ethics filings, which disclose ranges rather than exact dollar amounts, is between $98 million and $332 million.

His portfolio includes holdings in Apple and Walmart, as well as other investments more directly tied to the health-care industry. The filing showed holdings of up to $5 million in Inception Fertility, a company with a network of fertility clinics; a maximum of $100,000 with pharmaceutical giant AbbVie; and as much as $600,000 with the nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group.

Oz also has up to $5 million in Nvidia, an artificial intelligence company that works in hospitals.

His biggest income lately has come as a global ambassador and adviser for iHerb, a website that sells health and beauty supplements, a partnership that has brought him as much as $25 million in company stock. He said in the filing he would forfeit the stock “as soon as practicable but not later than 90 days after confirmation.”

In an examination of Oz’s finances, the New York Times noted that under private Medicare plans, customers can purchase over-the-counter medicines and supplements through debit or prepaid cards, which the authors called “another potential conflict for Dr. Oz because of his history with iHerb and other supplement companies.”