In Atlantic City, Mehmet Oz claims Trump’s Medicaid changes will push ‘more people into the workforce.’ Many recipients are already working.
“It is my primary focus to make sure we don’t have people accidentally pushed off the system,” said Oz.
Rather than push people off Medicaid, President Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill“ — now law — will “move more people into the workforce,” argued Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
In a brief interview during a Friday visit to AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center in Atlantic City, Oz countered criticisms that the newly passed legislation will deprive low-income people of Medicaid.
“It is my primary focus to make sure we don’t have people accidentally pushed off the system,” said Oz, an author, former surgeon, and television personality whose promotion of health advice and products has been criticized as misinformed and dangerous.
Known to millions as “Dr. Oz,” he lost the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania to Democrat John Fetterman in his first foray into politics.
Now as a federal administrator, Oz has repeated the conservative talking point that Medicaid is currently weakened by “waste, fraud, and abuse,” a claim disputed by policy experts.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected in June that the changes to Medicaid under the legislation would result in roughly 8 million people being removed from Medicaid rolls.
Oz didn’t address that figure directly on Friday, saying instead that new federal regulations will motivate people to return to the workforce, not punish them.
“If you’re able-bodied and able to work and you’re not, on average you’re spending 6.1 hours a day watching television or just hanging out … so we’re saying, you oughta try to go to work,” Oz said.
However, of nondisabled adults under 65 who rely on Medicaid, 92% are either working, caring for a family member, managing an illness or disability, or attending school, according to KFF, a national nonprofit focusing on health issues formerly known as Kaiser Family Foundation.
“Hitting us over the head with the idea there’s rampant fraud is a distraction and simply a way of justifying cuts to a desperately needed program,” said Judith Levine, director of Temple University’s Public Policy Lab.
In the interview, Oz stressed that he believes Medicaid has drifted from its original purpose as delineated by former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a liberal advocate for government programs that help those in poverty.
Oz quoted Humphrey, saying, “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”
After the interview, Oz participated in private roundtable discussions with South Jersey politicians and health professionals.