Here is a sentence we never expected to say. Dr. Mehmet Oz will in all likelihood be the next head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He was tapped by President-elect Trump, who said in a statement that Oz would “cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency” and would see that “we get the best results in the world for every dollar we spend on healthcare in our Great Country.”
At this point, we are not sure what “cutting waste in fraud” could mean within CMS, and who would be at the other end of those cuts, or how operators in the senior care world might have to change their way of business. But Dr. Oz also represents a sort of blank slate when it comes to administrative policy. If his potential boss, RFK Jr., gets confirmed by the Senate, we are also not sure of his level of interest in drastically changing things at CMS, versus at the FDA let’s say.
But three things are reassuring. One, he is a physician and has a Wharton MBA, not bad experience to bring to table. Two, he and the whole administration favor a generally pro-business approach to regulation (and will be limited anyways by the Supreme Court’s Chevron reversal). And three, the new Republican party under Trump is hesitant to make any cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. But that doesn’t mean change isn’t coming.
