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"Given Dr. Oz's history of basically acting as a salesman for Medicare Advantage, putting him in charge of regulating these middlemen would be like letting the fox guard the henhhouse," said one Democratic senator.
The U.S. Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to advance the nomination of Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a move that drew widespread rebuke from consumer advocates and others who pointed to the celebrity surgeon's advocacy for private Medicare Advantage plans and other red flags.
The Finance Committee voted 14-13 to send Oz's nomination to a full Senate vote, with Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) hailing the former television talk show host's "years of experience as an acclaimed physician and public health advocate."
However, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the committee's ranking member, said he voted against Oz, explaining that the nominee "was given the chance to assure the American people that he would not be a rubber stamp for Republicans' plans to gut Medicaid" and raise Affordable Care Act premiums, but "at every turn, he failed the test."
"No senator should be fooled by the snake oil Oz is selling."
Wyden said he is "deeply concerned about Dr. Oz's history marketing Medicare Advantage plans," which, as frequent Common Dreams opinion contributor Thom Hartmann explained, are not part of Medicare but are a private health insurance "scam" created by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by then-President George W. Bush "as a way of routing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of for-profit insurance companies.
Wyden added, "Given Dr. Oz's history of basically acting as a salesman for Medicare Advantage, putting him in charge of regulating these middlemen would be like letting the fox guard the henhouse."
Last December, the watchdog Accountable.US revealed that Oz had invested as much as $56 million in three companies with wdirect CMS interests. In 2022, Oz's single biggest healthcare holding was up to $26 million in Sharecare, a digital health company he co-founded, and which became the exclusive in-home supplemental care program for 1.5 million Medicare Advantage customers. Nick Clemens, Oz's spokesperson on the Trump transition team, toldUSA TODAY last December that Oz sold his stake in Sharecare.
These and other apparent conflicts of interest prompted denunciations from progressive groups and Democratic lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who also called attention to Oz's promotion of "quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain."
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said Tuesday: "Mehmet Oz is fundamentally unqualified for the position of administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and should never have been nominated for the position based on his conflicts of interest alone. The Senate Finance Committee should have unanimously rejected his confirmation."
Weissman continued:
Under Oz's watch, could strip crucial healthcare services through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act could be stripped from hundreds of millions of Americans. As he showed in his confirmation hearing, Oz would seek to further privatize Medicare, threatening access to care for tens of millions of Americans. Privatized Medicare Advantage plans deliver inferior care and cost taxpayers nearly $100 billion annually in excess costs.
He also refused to commit to push back on efforts to slash Medicaid, which would harm access to care for millions—especially the poor and vulnerable—just so Trump and [and his adviser Elon] Musk can give tax breaks to their billionaire buddies.
"We need a CMS administrator who believes in the importance of protecting crucial health programs like Medicare and Medicaid hand would put patients ahead of corporate profits," Weissman added. "We can only hope that sanity prevails when Oz comes for a vote before the full Senate. No senator should be fooled by the snake oil Oz is selling."
Tuesday's vote came as congressional Republicans seek to
slash $880 billion from programs overseen by the House Energy and Commerce Committee—which include Medicaid—in order to help pay for Trump's $4.5 trillion tax cut, which experts say would overwhelmingly benefit the ultrawealthy and corporations.
"The multimillionaire Republicans in charge of these key committees cannot properly represent average Americans' tax and spending interests," said the executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.
An analysis published Thursday shows that Republicans on key committees in the House and Senate are poised to reap huge windfalls for themselves and their families if the trillions of dollars in tax breaks they've been tasked with crafting become law.
The Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) report examines GOP members of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. The group found that the average net worth of the committees' Republican members is close to $15 million.
Over two-thirds of the 26 members of the House Ways and Means Committee are millionaires, according to ATF.
"The wealthiest GOP members could give themselves a roughly $1.8 million annual income tax cut and their families a potential one-time estate tax cut of $22.8 million—a potential total of $24.6 million in tax cuts if they pass legislation to extend the Trump tax bill," ATF's analysis shows.
The number two Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida, is worth nearly $250 million, making him one of the richest members of Congress.
If the tax package that Republican lawmakers are assembling is enacted, Buchanan's family stands to save $5.6 million in taxes thanks to an extension of the 2017 law's estate tax exemptions. Buchanan would personally receive $1.3 million in annual income tax breaks under an extension of the 2017 measure.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who helped secure a major tax gift for the wealthy in the 2017 law, and his family would also benefit to the tune of nearly $6 million from estate tax provisions and other giveaways.
"The multimillionaire Republicans in charge of these key committees cannot properly represent average Americans' tax and spending interests," David Kass, ATF's executive director, said in a statement Thursday. "Their prioritization of extending Trump's tax scam demonstrates their disconnect from middle and working-class constituents' needs."
"While wealthy Democrats also serve on these committees, they aren't promoting continuing the entire Trump tax legislation which primarily benefits rich individuals like them and giant corporations—legislation that would add trillions to the deficit and threaten funding for Social Security, healthcare, education, housing, and other vital public services," Kass added. "A system where millionaires vote for tax benefits favoring other wealthy elites undermines both our economy and democracy."
Under a resolution that House Republicans approved earlier this week, the House Ways and Means Committee is instructed to "submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction that increase the deficit by not more than" $4.5 trillion over the next decade—which would clear the way for an extension of the 2017 tax law that President Donald Trump signed during his first term.
The resolution also instructs the committees that oversee Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to enact more than $1 trillion in cuts to partially offset the massive cost of the tax giveaways, which would primarily benefit the rich.
According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), "the richest 1% would receive an average tax cut of more than $78,000 in 2026 alone, far outstripping tax cuts to taxpayers in any other income group."
"More than two-thirds of the benefits of these changes would go to the richest fifth of Americans, with 21% of the benefits flowing to the richest 1% alone," Steve Wamhoff, ITEP's federal policy director, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "Meanwhile, the middle fifth (20%) of Americans would get just 10% of the benefits and the poorest fifth of Americans would receive 1%."
The billionaire oligarch and his henchmen are wreaking havoc in government offices with sensitive personal data of all U.S. citizens. If left unchecked, this is just the beginning of their assault on our democratic system.
In raids reminiscent of the “January 6” Proud Boys attack on the U.S. Capitol four years ago, unelected, unvetted, and without federal government security clearance, the Trump-anointed head of the yet unapproved Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) Elon Musk and his henchmen are wreaking havoc in government offices with sensitive personal data of all U.S. citizens.
Last week, Musk’s blitzkrieg team gained access to sensitive Treasury data including the Social Security and Medicare customer payment system. Access to the system is closely held because it includes sensitive personal information about the millions of U.S. citizens who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds, and other payments from the federal government.
The responsibility for ensuring payments are accurate is on individual agencies, not the relatively small staff of civil servants at the Treasury Department’s Office of Fiscal Services, which is responsible for making more than one billion payments per year. The office disbursed more than $5 trillion in fiscal year 2023.
Career Department of Treasury Senior Official Forced Out of Job of Ensuring Massive Data Security
After receiving the demand from Musk and his DOGE operatives for access to the extremely sensitive data the Department of Treasury’s on Friday acting Deputy Secretary David Lebryk resigned from his position at Treasury after more than 30 years of service.
The previous weekend, Lebryk had been pushed by Tom Krause—the chief executive of a Silicon Valley company, Cloud Software Group and a member of Musk’s blitzkrieg team—for entry into the federal payments system. Lebryk refused and then was subsequently put on administrative leave and then forced to resign.
In response to Lebryk’s resignation, Musk responded on February 1 to a post on his social media platform X: “The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once.”
In Musk and Trump styles, Musk provided NO evidence for his allegation.
Senator Ron Wyden Pushes Back on Musk’s Politically Motivated Access to Highly Sensitive Financial Programs and Data
Also on Friday, after hearing about the DOGE raid on the Office of Financial Services, Senator Ron Wyden, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outraged that “officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy.”
Sen. Wyden pushed back against DOGE operatives, saying “I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”
Writing on social media on Saturday, Wyden said that “sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system, Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it."
In a four-page letter dated January 31, 2025, Wyden demanded answers from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent following a report that personnel affiliated with Musk sought access to the highly sensitive Treasury Department payment system. That system, which is maintained by non-political staff, disperses trillions of dollars each year, such as Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax credits for individuals and businesses, grants and payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk-owned companies.
Senator Wyden wrote to Trump’s new Secretary of the Treasury:
“I write regarding disturbing reports that officials associated with Elon Musk and the so called U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) attempted to gain access to systems that control payments to millions of American citizens, including Social Security, Medicare and tax refunds. A confrontation over access apparently resulted in the abrupt resignation of David Lebryk, a career non-partisan Treasury official who recently had been named acting Secretary of the Treasury by President Trump.
These reports are particularly concerning given incidents earlier this week in which Medicaid portals in all 50 states were shut down along with other crucial payment programs, following the Trump Administration illegally issuing an order to freeze all grant and loan payments.
As you are aware, the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion in annual payments to households, businesses and other entities nationwide. These payment systems process more than a billion payments annually and are responsible for the distribution of Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax refunds, payments to federal employees and contractors, including competitors of Musk-owned companies, and thousands of other functions.
To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy.
I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs.
I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission critical systems.
Whether intentional or unintentional, failure of these payment systems could stop Social Security checks from being sent to retirees who need to pay bills and buy food and drugs. It could stop paychecks from being sent to our troops and their families. As you well know, Americans are in the middle of tax filing season, with many counting on tax refunds that they are legally owed by the government.
Most importantly, the federal government is in a financially precarious position, currently utilizing accounting maneuvers to continue paying its bills since it reached the debt limit at the beginning of the year. I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States.
Accordingly, I am deeply concerned by the possibility that Elon Musk and a cadre of other unknown DOGE personnel are seeking to gain access to and potentially control the Fiscal Service’s payment systems in order to carry out a political agenda that clearly involves violating the law. It appears that Musk’s behavior is forcing out highly qualified and experienced career public servants in order to get his way and fulfill Trump’s goal of eviscerating the federal budget, including potentially by cutting social security and Medicare benefits for millions of Americans who are already struggling to pay their bills or buy groceries.
The press has previously reported that Musk was denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China -- a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.
Musk now has access to data of all U.S. government employees with no oversight for cybersecurity issues Musk can cause.
DOGE operatives gained access to this Treasury payment system on Friday, the same day that an official at the Office of Personnel Management revealed that Musk operatives had locked career civil servants out of a computer system containing the personal information of federal employees. The action of this group of DOGE operatives, including Musk, is part of the Trump administration's efforts to assert authoritarian control over the federal government.
An Office of Personnel Management (OPM) official toldReuters that "we have no visibility" into what Musk aides "are doing with the computer and data systems," and "that is creating great concern. There is no oversight and it creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."
Earlier this week, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, warned that Trump "is trying every trick he and his Project 2025 cronies can think of to circumvent established civil service protections so they can purge the civil service of experts and replace them with political loyalists."