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Trump Picks TV’s Dr. Oz to Run Medicare and Medicaid

Trump and Oz in 2022
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey
Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Good evening! President-elect Donald Trump continued to stock his Cabinet on Tuesday, and he also announced his choice to oversee Medicare and Medicaid. Also today, House Democrats reelected Rep. Hakeem Jeffries as their leader and also kept other top members of their leadership team in place, including Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Minority Whip Katherine Clark.

Here’s what you should know.

Trump Picks TV’s Dr. Oz to Run Medicare and Medicaid

President-elect Donald Trump continued to fill the top levels of his administration on Tuesday, choosing Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of his presidential transition team and CEO of brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, as his commerce secretary and nominating Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former television host, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS).

Lutnick, a cryptocurrency enthusiast, had reportedly been a top contender for treasury secretary. At the Commerce Department, he will be responsible for overseeing Trump’s trade and tariff agenda as the head of a 51,000-person agency with a wide-ranging role in growing the economy and promoting U.S. business globally.

Oz, meanwhile, continues Trump’s pattern of building a made-for-TV administration. Best known as a television personality, Oz was a heart surgeon before becoming a talk show host. Trump’s announcement notes that he won nine Daytime Emmy Awards for “The Dr. Oz Show.” A vocal Trump supporter, Oz ran for the Senate in 2022 as a Republican but lost to Sen. John Fetterman, who regularly mocked him as a wealthy celebrity carpetbagger out of touch with the people of Pennsylvania.

The 64-year-old Oz has also been criticized for promoting questionable medical products and treatments. He has no experience leading the type of large-scale bureaucracy he would oversee if confirmed by the Senate. As CMS administrator, he would oversee Medicare and Medicaid, the government’s massive health insurance programs for the elderly, poor and disabled, as well as the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Healthcare.gov Affordable Care Act exchange. In all, CMS oversees health coverage for more than 150 million people and accounts for more than $1.5 trillion in net spending, or 22% of federal outlays.

Oz would report to Trump’s controversial pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“America is facing a Healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again,” Trump said in a statement announcing the pick. “Our broken Healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget. Dr. Oz will be a leader in incentivizing Disease Prevention, so we get the best results in the World for every dollar we spend on Healthcare in our Great Country. He will also cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget.”

The bottom line: Oz is already facing criticism that he is unfit to head CMS — and concerns that he has promoted a slew of dubious alternative medical treatments or may want to privatize Medicare. But given the backlash other Trump nominees face, Oz may be likely to be confirmed, and even Fetterman has already indicated he’s prepared to vote in his favor. “I’m going to be very, very clear if Dr. Oz agrees to protect and preserve Medicaid and Medicare, I’m absolutely going to vote for the dude,” he told CNN.

House GOP Lays Out Priorities for Next Congress

Republicans in the House met behind closed doors Tuesday to lay out their priorities for the new Congress that starts in January, and their to-do list looks pretty familiar to anyone who’s been observing GOP politics over the last few years: build the border wall and crack down on immigration, lock in the 2017 tax cuts, drill more oil, slash programs passed by Democrats and reduce the size of the “administrative state.”

Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the meeting that recent discussions with President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance and their senior policy advisers have made it clear that there is complete agreement between House leadership and the incoming administration. “There is no daylight between their agenda and what they envision and what we envision for the House,” he said.

Johnson expects to move quickly to kick off a “breakneck 119th Congress” starting on January 3. “The agenda will be fast paced,” he said. “The first 100 days will be very full because we have a lot to fix. And as I've said many times, I believe President Trump could be the most consequential president of the modern era because we have to fix everything.”

Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters that lawmakers have been discussing the parliamentary procedure known as budget reconciliation, which Republicans expect to use to pass major changes in tax and spending policies without Democratic input or support. “I assembled committee chairs last week to go through what we will be doing in budget reconciliation starting in January,” he said. Scalise added that Republican lawmakers are already working with Trump so they’re ready to go on “day one.”

Trump’s tariff proposals were reportedly discussed at the meeting, as well, with one member asking if projected revenues from the tariffs could be used to offset the cost of the reconciliation package. “We are going to be having a lot of discussions with President Trump about the framework,” Scalise told Politico. “Obviously, keeping the current tax rates where they are — not having any tax increases — is the main objective. There were a lot of other items that President Trump put on the table during the campaign that we want to work with him on. So we've got to look at the numbers, make sure everything adds up, because budget reconciliation does give you some limitations.”

Congressional rules limit what items can be included in a reconciliation bill that can be passed by the Senate with a simple majority that cannot be filibustered rather than the usual 60-vote supermajority. Reconciliation bills can be used for legislation that affects spending, revenues, or the debt limit, and the Byrd Rule, named for former Sen. Robert Byrd, prohibits such bills from increasing the deficit beyond the budget window of 10 years or changing Social Security.

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