Oz Testifies at His Senate Finance Confirmation Hearing, Mar. 14, 2025
March 14, 2025 · PBS NewsHour · 2:45:25
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
Dr. Mehmet Oz testified on March 14, 2025, before the Senate Finance Committee at the confirmation hearing on his nomination to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. C-SPAN’s summary of the hearing records that he responded to lawmakers’ questions on Medicaid, prescription drug costs, maternal health care, and rural health care over roughly two hours and forty minutes.
Oz promised senators he would fight health-care fraud and push to make Americans healthier if confirmed, calling it, in the Associated Press’s report of the hearing, “a generational opportunity to fix our health care system and help people stay healthy for longer,” and said technology such as artificial intelligence and telemedicine could be key to making care more efficient. On prior authorization, he characterized the process as “a pox on the system,” noted that more than 12% of the health-care budget goes to administrative costs, and suggested reforms including limiting the number of procedures requiring prior authorization to 1,000 and using AI to speed reviews, according to a healthcare-industry summary of the hearing. On Medicare Advantage, he said the United States is “paying more for Medicare Advantage than we’re paying for regular Medicare, so it’s upside down,” and vowed to crack down on overpayments. Senator Hassan pressed him on supplements he had promoted on his television show, including raspberry ketones; Oz said he was paid nothing to promote the supplements, according to the C-SPAN transcript. The criticism carried at the hearing, as the Associated Press reported it: Oz declined several opportunities to say broadly whether he would oppose cuts to Medicaid, and Ranking Member Ron Wyden said that when asked whether he would protect Medicaid, Oz “dodged and weaved and refused to answer.” The Senate confirmed Oz on April 3, 2025, by a vote of 53–45.
Why it matters
This hearing is the founding document of Oz’s CMS tenure: the fraud fight, the prior-authorization reform, the Medicare Advantage overpayment pledge, and the technology agenda he stated here are the commitments his administrator record — the takedowns, the model launches, and the fraud campaign documented across this site — is measured against. It is also the hearing at which the central criticism of his tenure was first put to him on the record, and it is carried here in the critics’ own words.
Scoreboard watch
This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: Oz’s March 14, 2025 confirmation commitments — fighting fraud, reforming prior authorization, and ending Medicare Advantage overpayments relative to traditional Medicare, each as stated at the hearing — to be checked against CMS’s actions in office.
Sources: Senate Committee on Finance, hearing on the nomination of Mehmet Oz to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, March 14, 2025 (full hearing as carried by PBS NewsHour, embedded above; full video also at C-SPAN, c-span.org); C-SPAN hearing summary and transcript excerpts, March 14, 2025; Associated Press report of the hearing, March 14, 2025. All figures and characterizations as stated by Dr. Oz and committee members at the hearing.
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