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Dr. Oz Leads CMS After Senate Confirmation: What His Appointment Means

Dr. Mehmet Oz was confirmed as CMS administrator in April 2025. Here is what the agency oversees, the priorities he announced and what CMS later reported about fraud enforcement.
From TheFinanceBase Team3 min to read
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Dr. Mehmet Oz is no longer just Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): the Senate confirmed him on April 3, 2025, and CMS lists him as its 17th administrator. His stated agenda emphasized clearer choices and cost information for patients, provider accountability, fraud prevention, and a greater focus on prevention and chronic disease.

Was Dr. Oz confirmed to lead Medicare and Medicaid?

Yes. The Senate confirmed Oz by a 53–45 vote on April 3, 2025, with two senators not voting, according to the United States Senate roll call. CMS’s leadership page identifies him as the agency’s 17th administrator. The Senate Finance Committee had voted 14–13 to advance his nomination, according to the committee’s announcement.

CMS is a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. It administers Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and the Health Insurance Marketplace. When CMS announced its priorities for Oz on April 10, 2025, it described the agency as having a $1.7 trillion budget and responsibility for health outcomes for more than 160 million people. Those are figures stated in that 2025 announcement, not a current budget or independently audited enrollment count.

What priorities did Oz announce for CMS?

CMS’s April 10, 2025 statement set out four broad priorities for Oz’s leadership. They describe an agenda, not proof that the agency has achieved the intended results.

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  • Make care easier to navigate: Offer people personalized options and clearer information, including greater cost transparency, so they can make decisions about health care.
  • Improve provider information and accountability: Give providers better information about patients and hold them accountable for outcomes, while reducing unnecessary administrative work and streamlining access to treatment.
  • Prevent fraud, waste, and abuse: Identify improper activity in programs CMS administers and act against it.
  • Emphasize prevention and chronic care: Shift attention toward wellness, prevention, and managing chronic disease.

In the announcement, CMS attributed to Oz this statement: “I want to thank President Trump and Secretary Kennedy for their confidence in my ability to lead CMS in achieving their vision to Make America Healthy Again.” The CMS release also attributed to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a commitment to combating fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid and ensuring the programs serve the American people.

What did Oz say at his confirmation hearing?

Senator Chuck Grassley’s account of the March 2025 hearing says Oz committed to supporting efforts involving lower prescription drug costs, rural health care, children with complex medical needs, transitional health plans, and making CMS more responsive to Congress. This is Grassley’s characterization of the commitments, rather than a hearing transcript or a guarantee of particular policy outcomes.

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What later CMS actions illustrate the fraud-control priority?

On February 25, 2026, CMS announced enforcement actions and figures it said reflected its program-integrity work. They show how the agency described its actions; they should not be read as independently verified savings or as final findings that every flagged claim involved fraud.

Minnesota Medicaid funding review

CMS said it was deferring $259,505,491 in federal Medicaid matching funds tied to Minnesota’s fourth-quarter FY2025 spending while its review continued. The agency attributed $243.8 million of the deferral to unsupported or potentially fraudulent claims and $15.4 million to claims involving people CMS said lacked satisfactory immigration status. These are CMS’s stated reasons and figures; the review was ongoing when it announced the deferral.

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Medicare supplier and billing actions

CMS also said it had imposed a six-month nationwide moratorium on new Medicare enrollment for certain suppliers of durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, and supplies (DMEPOS). The agency reported that it had stopped more than $1.5 billion in suspected fraudulent DMEPOS billing in the prior year.

In the same February 25, 2026 release, CMS reported suspending $5.7 billion in suspected fraudulent Medicare payments, denying 122,658 Medicare claims for items or services it said failed preliminary checks, revoking 5,586 providers’ and suppliers’ ability to bill Medicare, and making 372 law-enforcement referrals involving $3.7 billion in billing. It also said it was working with 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands on tax-fraud enforcement. These are agency-reported actions and amounts, not evidence that the sums were recovered or that every allegation was adjudicated.

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