A Conversation with Dr. Mehmet Oz: On the Erosion of Trust in Experts, Rethinking Safety Nets & Fraud

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is our guest today.

He oversees the government programs that provide health coverage to nearly half of all Americans and account for roughly a quarter of federal spending.

At this moment of enormous change, what does Dr. Oz see as his mission?

Alongside Vice President JD Vance, he has been tasked with rooting out fraud. He argues this effort, along with changes to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Act, will strengthen thesafety net and preserve it for the Americans it was intended to serve.

However, an official nonpartisan government estimate finds that compared with the previous law, the new law will result in hundreds of billions fewer federal dollars going to Medicaid over the next decade and millions more Americans becoming uninsured. Dr. Oz insists America will spend more on Medicaid, not less. We ask him about that.

We'll also dig into a larger question at the heart of this debate: Was the ACA's expansion of Medicaid—which has covered roughly 20 million additional Americans—ultimately a good thing? 

And finally, we ask Dr. Oz, a renowned heart surgeon whose career was built on medical expertise, what he makes of this moment in America, where trust in experts is falling. Is growing skepticism a healthy correction, or is it taking us somewhere more troubling?

Hosts:

Brinda Adhikari

Tom Johnson

Dr. Mark Abdelmalek

Maggie Bartlett (producer)

Khushi Patel (research)

Isabella Didie (research)

**Recorded at Switch & Board Studios in Washington, DC.

Guest: 

Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

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