STAT+: Oz moves closer to role running Medicare, Medicaid on party-line vote
Dr. Oz, a former heart surgeon and TV host, is closer to becoming CMS administrator after clearing a key Senate committee vote.
Mehmet Oz has been a heart surgeon, a TV show host, an author, and a Senate candidate. On Tuesday, he inched closer to adding CMS administrator to the list.
The Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines to send Oz’s nomination to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to the full Senate for a vote, where he’ll likely be confirmed. All 14 Republicans on the committee voted in favor of Oz’s nomination and all 13 Democrats voted against. The CMS has a roughly $1.5 trillion budget and oversees health care for about 160 million Americans.
All of the Democrats who spoke ahead of the vote said that they could not support Oz because he wouldn’t commit to guarding against Republicans’ planned cuts to Medicaid, the program that covers over 70 million low-income Americans.
