TRANSCRIPT
April 25, 2025
NEWS PROGRAM
DR. MEHMET OZ, ADMINISTRATOR, CENTER FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID
SERVICES; BILL HEMMER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR
DR. MEHMET OZ, ADMINISTRATOR, CENTER FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID
SERVICES, IS INTERVIEWED ON FOX NEWS' "AMERICA'S NEWSROOM"
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DR. MEHMET OZ, ADMINISTRATOR, CENTER FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID
SERVICES, IS INTERVIEWED ON FOX NEWS' "AMERICA'S NEWSROOM"
APRIL 25, 2025
SPEAKERS:
DR. MEHMET OZ, ADMINISTRATOR, CENTER FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID
SERVICES
BILL HEMMER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR
HEMMER: The doctor is in, CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. And congratulations on the gig and thank you for spending time with us today on "America's Newsroom." Good morning.
Huge job, by the way. You said 160 million Americans touched by CMS, 100 — $1.5 trillion in spending. This is a massive job.
In a line or a sentence, what is your mission as you go into this?
OZ: My mission is to protect the most vulnerable, because I'll tell you, as a heart surgeon, the most expensive care is bad care. You've got to pay the — by — person who's doing a bad job, you've got to pay someone else who's capable to fix the problem, and you've got to pay for the complications.
And there's so many things we can do to improve care in America. And folks who watch this program are probably witnessing and — pretty — pretty good testimonials out there about what would — had — what has been done in the past that's not worked well.
But here's the good news — we can empower beneficiaries, give you tools, and that's coming down the pike at you. We can make sure providers have better opportunities to — and incentivize them to do the right thing, cause often times in CMS, we unfortunately — gotten folks to do things wrong because we paid them for doing things incorrectly.
But right now, my main focus without any question is to wage a war on fraud, waste, and abuse...
HEMMER: OK.
OZ: ... because that's what's required. All hands on deck. It's a massive issue. You know, a — hundreds of — of — of billions of dollars potentially out there. Not all of it's going to be collected at once, but we've got a war room right now focused very much on things that are going to really bother you.
If you thought USAID was a problem, some of the issues that we are discovering, some of the things that CMS has been funding through Medicare and Medicaid and the exchanges will — will, you know, bring a little shiver to you.
HEMMER: OK. Let's get into it, cause Democrats are going at you in a big way, demonizing all of this stuff. Just play a clip here, OK, and I'll get into specifics after this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHARLES E. SCHUMER, D-N.Y., SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Every American will be more vulnerable to President Trump's agenda that prioritizes the billionaire class over the working class, as he cuts Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid...
REP. MAXWELL FROST, D-FLA.: I can fight these proposed cuts to Medicaid that Donald Trump wants to...
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES, D-N.Y., HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: An assault on the economy, on Social Security, on Medicaid, an assault on the — the democratic way of life.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, D-N.Y.: Voting to advance cuts on hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and veterans' benefits...
(BOOING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: So, I mean, this is a song they're singing, and you're going to have to defend it. Elon Musk said this a couple of months ago — "This is where the big money fraud is happening," talking about what's happening in Medicare and Medicaid. Can you say today, are you cutting Medicaid, as Democrats claim and will continue going up to midterms next year?
OZ: President Trump has been very clear with me, he said it publicly, he wants to love and cherish — I am quoting him — Medicare, Medicaid, these programs. We are focused on saving Medicaid. That's what we've got to do. That's the existential threat, that you spend it into the ground and we don't have the resources to take care of our most vulnerable.
I'm sitting right now in the Humphreys (sic) Building, which is the Health and Human Services building. Bobby Kennedy and I basically live here now. If you walk in the building, there is a quote from Hubert Humphrey that says it's a moral obligation of government to take care of people who are in the dawn of life, children; people in the twilight of life, mature seniors; and people who are in the shadows, those with disabilities. To do that, you have got to make the system work better.
And Democrats should be cheering us on because we're going after problems that have plagued this system, that people have not dealt with for the last four years. I'll give you a couple of examples, Bill, but simple ones.
$1 billion spent, Medicare money, taxpayer money, money that should have gone to — to impoverished children and seniors struggling with — with the — with the illnesses that you get when you — when you get older — and this $1 billion went because people were registered in multiple states on Medicaid at once. So you're paying a lot of states even though they're not living in those states any more.
We've got $200 million spent on housekeeping services. Is that part of the charge of Medicaid? $10 million spent on student loans from Medicaid. That could go to saving people who have sickle cell anemia, with gene therapy that's — that's remarkably effective in completely reversing a disease. $3 million on DEI, another $11 million on labor unions' childcare benefits.
I mean, come on. At a certain point, you look up and you say you must be kidding. How can someone not have dealt with this? Last year, almost a quarter million people were registered in the marketplaces who shouldn't have been.
HEMMER: ... got — so DOGE goes in. What — what's the expectation for savings from DOGE? Give us a number today based on $1.5 trillion in spending.
OZ: We've already discovered, just since I've been here and even before, since the inauguration, tens of billions of dollars that is a fraud easily taken back. We — we just stopped the — recently a couple hundred million dollars for — going out the door that would have actually been taken by folks, and who knows where they are taking the money when they get it. These people are not involved in legitimate activities.
So the $31 million that I know of last week is a great example of this. We stopped the money, by using new technology, by modernizing how Medicare and Medicare works, from even leaving the building cause we knew something was fishy about these bills.
And these aren't just, you know, small, little mistakes, these are organized criminal efforts to hurt our country, some of them launched by foreign countries. So these are issues we want to get into that we've...
(CROSSTALK)
OZ: ... and that's why we have this war room.
And before I forget, Bill, this is important — this is all hands on deck. If you have a tip, call us at 1-800-HHS-TIPS, or CMS.gov/fraud. We need your help. You will identify problems. If you see something, say something.
HEMMER: OK. The — this program was designed for poor kids, pregnant women, the elderly, and disabled. And you're saying today that those categories will not be affected by what you're doing. Is that what I hear?
OZ: You hear actually — absolutely correctly. What I'm saying is what the President has reflected as well.
HEMMER: OK.
OZ: The people who were supposed to be supported by Medicaid when the program was first designed in 1965 will continue to be helped. And if we don't make some of the changes by reducing fraud and waste and abuse now, we're putting those young people, those old people, and the people in the middle who are in the shadows in trouble.
HEMMER: All right. A lot of people are watching. Thanks for coming on. Let's speak again, OK? It's too big a category to conquer in five minutes. Thank you, doc, for coming on. Appreciate it.
OZ: God bless you, and love to Dana.
END