Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, was pressed during his Senate confirmation hearing Friday about the possibility of nursing homes losing staffing:
“Do you believe, in a nursing home, there should be a registered nurse available around the clock, 24/7?” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked Oz during the Senate Finance Committee hearing.
“It’s a complicated question,” Oz started.
“No, it’s not,” Wyden fired back.
The senator was referring to a Biden administration rule, which was finalized in April, that requires minimum standards for staffing for nursing homes, amid fears the Trump administration could roll back the standard.
Oz did not directly say in the hearing that he supports ending the staffing rule, but he alluded to a belief that it was unnecessary:
“I believe we can provide quality of care equivalent to having a nurse in that nursing home using tools and technologies including telemedicine.”
Trump tapped Oz, a former daytime TV host and U.S. Senate candidate, to run CMS, the federal agency that administers Medicare and works with states to dole out Medicaid. He has no official government experience, and his views on health care coverage are cloudy. In 2009, he was quoted saying health care coverage should be “mandatory.” In 2010, he appeared in an ad for Obamacare, despite not agreeing with the policy in full. In 2022, a spokeswoman for his campaign noted that he would have voted against the Affordable Care Act if he was in office. And the Trump administration sought counsel from Oz in an unofficial capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is partially to thank for Trump’s push of hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19. (It is not recognized as a cure by the WHO or FDA.)
