Mehmet Oz Address Medicaid Cuts From Trump's Big Beautiful Bill

Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, has responded to fears over the future of its programs following the passage of President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Why It Matters

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the tax package signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4 will cut Medicaid funding by more than $900 billion over the next decade. These reductions and changes to the programs' funding structures have aroused fears that millions could lose coverage while others see their access to health care significantly impacted.

However, the administration has emphasized its commitment to protecting Medicaid for the most vulnerable sectors of society, and maintained that it can secure sufficient funding through work requirements and by addressing out fraud, waste and abuse within the programs.

What To Know

During an interview with Fox News on Saturday, host Lara Trump asked Oz to address Americans with concerns that provisions in the bill could result in many losing access to health care.

"It is tough to take care of people who are vulnerable, but every great society does it and we're great people who are going to do that," Oz said. "That is the focus and somehow the system slipped—through drift or maybe by design—it became a very different program over the last several years."

During the interview on Saturday, Oz said he wanted to "put the clock" back on Medicaid, to the pre-COVID period, when it was "viable. When it was working."

As well as remedying state-directed payments—which he called "legalized money laundering"—Oz said that the issue of "able-bodied people being on Medicaid" was behind a push for work requirements. The 1,200-page budget package includes a mandate that recipients participate in work-related activities for 80 hours per month or study part-time unless granted an exemption.

Experts who spoke to Newsweek previously warned that this could push millions of legitimate recipients off Medicaid, citing evidence of confusion over reporting requirements and other administrative challenges.

Oz also reiterated his vision of an information "ecosystem" to reduce waste in the health care system, in which individuals would be granted greater access to their records and given the ability to share these with providers.

He previously announced this plan at a "Making Health Technology Great" event at the White House in July. This move has the backing of several major tech companies, including Google, Amazon and OpenAI, according to The New York Times.

"Every major technology company has gotten involved in this. They're going to make it easier for you to get smarter about yourself," Oz said on Saturday. "It empowers you. And to me that's the ultimate [Make America Healthy Again] move."

What People Are Saying

Mehmet Oz, during a White House event in late July, said: "These beautiful programs, which are the backbone of the social network—the social support system of this country, the safety net—they're failing. They're failing for a bunch of reasons. Medicaid is a unique entity. it has deviated from its original purpose by drift and by design. The one big beautiful bill—the OB3 law—was elegant for that very reason."

Oz added that the administration would be investing $200 billion into Medicaid, and that this would be used "specifically to use to support rural America. and primarily some of that money will be used to support digital infrastructure, which is terribly lacking in many parts of the country."

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a D.C.-based research institute, said: "The so-called 'big beautiful bill' is anything but beautiful; it will cause widespread harm by making massive cuts to Medicaid, Affordable Care Act marketplace coverage, and SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], which will raise costs on families and make it much harder for them to afford the high cost of groceries and health care."

Jamila Michener, a professor of government and public policy at Cornell University in New York, told Newsweek in May: "Work requirements are simply Medicaid cuts by another name. They serve little other purpose. There is little to no evidence that work requirements actually boost labor market participation."

What Happens Next?

As Oz has stated, the administration's priorities will continue to be cutting fraud and waste in Medicaid and Medicare, while also reducing the number of ineligible recipients relying on the programs, such as undocumented immigrants and able-bodied Americans.