By Sabrina Siddiqui

WASHINGTON -- Mehmet Oz arrived on Capitol Hill last week to pitch Republicans on an idea to codify into law President Trump's drug-pricing model, which ties U.S. pharmaceutical costs to lower prices typically paid abroad.

Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, could sense the skepticism from GOP senators -- members of the Finance Committee -- as they raised concerns about industry backlash and a potential chilling effect on innovation.

"You read the room," Oz said in an interview. "When's the right time to tell them they need to do something different?"

The move marked the opening effort of the administration's push to advance the president's plan ahead of the midterm elections, as healthcare costs have become a top voter concern. While Trump has proposed sending money directly to Americans through Health Savings Accounts to ease those costs, that discussion was absent from Oz's talks with Republicans, he said.

"That's not the most important issue for us," said Oz, the former television host and celebrity surgeon widely known as Dr. Oz. He emphasized making sure that pricing deals reached under Trump with more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies endure beyond his time in office. "We didn't demand that they do it. We said, 'This is something that is very popular and highly achievable.'"

The closed-door meeting highlighted Oz's rise as a power broker in Trump's second term, despite being an unconventional choice to lead one of the nation's top health agencies. His background in medicine and television has trained him to study body language and mood, he said, a skill that has proved useful as he takes on an elevated administration portfolio.

Typically, CMS administrator isn't a high-profile role. But Oz has Trump's ear and speaks with the president frequently. "It's usually about healthcare policy," he said.

After an unsuccessful 2022 Senate bid in Pennsylvania, Oz, 65 years old, arrived in Washington just over a year ago best known as the celebrity-doctor host of his eponymous show. He was without experience in the federal government and the mechanics of setting the nation's health policy. He since has become one of Trump's closest allies and a visible figure in the administration's "Make America Healthy Again" movement.

Oz's flair for showmanship has at times led the White House to solicit his input on presentation and choreography for certain events with Trump, according to people familiar with the matter, such as drug-pricing announcements and the rollout of the government-run website TrumpRx.

Some allies describe Oz as "MAHA before MAHA," pointing to his years of TV segments on gut health, nutrition and lifestyle changes. His relationships with Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. date back more than a decade. People close to Trump and Oz have said the president sees his CMS administrator as something of a kindred spirit who similarly parlayed television fame into political prominence.

Oz is also closely aligned with Kennedy, whose vaccine policies have drawn backlash from public-health experts. Oz defended the health secretary as "an inherently curious person" in pursuit of the truth. Asked whether he was comfortable, as a physician, with Kennedy's decision to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule, Oz said the goal was to ensure children are protected against the most dangerous viruses while allowing parents more discretion on others.

"I want to make sure that the viruses that are most likely to hurt our children, in particular, are protected against," he said.

Oz's expanded profile has also placed him in a central role in the administration's antifraud campaign -- with a focus on alleged Medicaid and Medicare fraud -- which has led to the freezing of billions of dollars in federal funds as investigations unfold in states including Minnesota and California.

The efforts pulled him into a rare public clash with California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who filed a civil-rights complaint alleging a video Oz posted about hospice fraud in Los Angeles County discriminated against the Armenian-American community and was "baseless and racially charged." In a social-media post, Newsom, a potential Democratic 2028 presidential candidate, also appeared to allude to Oz's Turkish background and the history of conflict between Turkey and Armenia.

"The bigger concern is that Gavin Newsom is unable to deal with the problem," Oz said, adding, "We've been in pursuit of fraud in every state."

Democrats have expressed concern about Oz, frequently citing his past promotion of supplements and other wellness products. But he has run his agency with relatively little internal turmoil compared with some other top Trump officials, relying on seasoned policy veterans even as several agencies have sidelined career staff. Still, he and his team face a daunting set of responsibilities.

They are now implementing last year's reductions to healthcare spending, which include new Medicaid eligibility requirements and a $50 billion fund aimed at transforming rural healthcare. Democrats and some healthcare advocates blasted those changes -- which Oz helped to shepherd through the Republican-controlled Congress -- for cutting nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over a decade and further imperiling hundreds of rural hospitals already at risk of closure.

Oz sees it differently: That roughly 430 rural hospitals were at risk before the administration took action, he argued, is proof that "the system's not working." He has pushed states to embrace more health technology and defended the spending changes as an incentive to rethink an aging rural healthcare infrastructure.

His agency has also drawn criticism for proposing nearly flat Medicare payment rates for next year, well below Wall Street expectations and a disappointment to insurers lobbying to raise the final rates before they are announced this spring.

"We very much want to have both of those programs work better, and that's the challenge," Oz said. "It's not just about throwing money at them."

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who attended the meeting last week of Republicans on the Finance Committee, said Oz was a "very influential salesman."

Will Oz be successful on Trump's healthcare plan? "I think it's going to be difficult to get it done, but I think we have to try," Grassley said.

Write to Sabrina Siddiqui at sabrina.siddiqui@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 05, 2026 21:00 ET (02:00 GMT)

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