Potential conflicts of interest may haunt Oz’s confirmation to run Medicare, Medicaid

In a 2019 production of his eponymous show, Mehmet Oz extolled the transformational results of Ozempic in an interview with comedian Billy Gardell about managing his Type 2 diabetes - and shedding 21 pounds after five months on the medication.

“Whoa! Now we’re talking!” Oz said as he double high-fived Gardell before turning to a drug company representative to explain the results.

The nine-minute infomercial embedded into Oz’s daytime talk show was sponsored by the drug’s manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, which Oz twice referred to as a “trusted partner.”

The segment, one of the earliest instances of Oz promoting Ozempic, showcases the financial ties between the renowned heart surgeon’s media business and companies whose fortunes he would have a hand in influencing as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Novo Nordisk was a key marketing client of a digital health and media company Oz founded with Oprah Winfrey and Jeff Arnold, founder of WebMD, in 2009, according to a 2021 investor presentation by that company, Sharecare.

If confirmed, Oz would take over two of the largest taxpayer-funded programs just as pharmaceutical companies are lobbying the government to cover the cost of weight-loss drugs.

The Biden administration last week proposed covering weight-loss drugs for millions of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, teeing up a costly decision for the Trump team on whether to expand access to the life-changing medication whose long-term effects have not been established.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary who, if confirmed, would oversee CMS, has been an outspoken critic of drugs like Ozempic, telling Fox News in October: “They’re counting on selling it to Americans because we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”

Oz has continued promoting weight-loss drugs on his website, where he not only touts the benefits of Ozempic and Wegovy, another Novo Nordisk drug, but also markets a collagen supplement to combat sagging facial skin known as “Ozempic face.”

“Having ongoing financial ties to a health-care company would create a disincentive to do the job the American people need done by the person in his position,” said Walter Shaub Jr., who was head of the Office of Government Ethics for more than four years, stretching from the Obama administration into the first months of the Trump administration. “The situation could be an ethical morass, unless he is truly willing to alter his finances and business dealings.”

Novo Nordisk spokeswoman Liz Skrbkova said that while the company worked with Oz’s show to sponsor the paid advertising segment with Gardell in 2019, it does not have an ongoing relationship with Oz; nor does it have a relationship with Sharecare, where Novo Nordisk had previously purchased media advertising. Oz did not answer questions about his business relationship with the drug company that were sent to the Trump transition team. Sharecare said Oz no longer has a financial stake in the company.

Brian Hughes, spokesman for the Trump-Vance transition, said, “All nominees and appointees will comply with the ethical obligations of their respective agencies.”

Oz, as CMS administrator, “will work to expand access, improve care, and get Americans the best results in the world for every dollar spent on health care,” said Nick Clemens, a Trump-Vance transition spokesman for Oz.

The financial and medical stakes are enormous. Expanding coverage to anti-obesity drugs could cost Medicare an additional $35 billion between 2026 and 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which factored in savings from improved health conditions. The windfall for Novo Nordisk and other pharmaceutical companies would be even greater if private insurers follow suit.

Critics of Oz’s pending nomination as CMS administrator say the role could pose other potential conflicts of interest after more than a dozen years headlining “The Dr. Oz Show,” where he mixed entertainment and medicine with product placement and corporate branding - sometimes without clear boundaries or sound science.

Through various media channels, he has not only pushed “miracle” treatments for fat loss that lack scientific evidence, but also promoted companies in which he has had a vested financial interest, including a “cellular nutrition company” and a biotech company creating bovine colostrum supplements — the powdered or pill version of the first milk a cow releases after giving birth.

In a 2014 hearing convened by the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection and product safety, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) pressed Oz to explain why he was recommending products whose health benefits medical experts have repeatedly questioned, including pills that she quoted him as saying “literally flushes fat from your system.”

Oz told the panel he simply wanted to start a conversation around some of these supplements, even if they are controversial. “I actually do personally believe in the items that I talk about on the show,” he said. “I passionately study them. I recognize that oftentimes they don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact, but nevertheless I would give my audience the advice I give my family all the time, and I have given my family these products.”

Oz’s response to The Washington Post did not directly address criticism that he promoted products that have not been scientifically proven to work.

Clemens, his spokesman, said, “As a world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon who led the heart institute at New York Presbyterian Medical Center, Dr. Mehmet Oz is eminently qualified to help Make America Healthy Again. Dr. Oz’s knowledge and success in health care, innovation, and communications will be an invaluable asset to the American people in the Trump-Vance Administration, and he appreciates the opportunity President Trump has given him to lead CMS.”

The weight-loss drug debate

The Danish-based Novo Nordisk and its U.S.-based rival, Eli Lilly, which manufactures Mounjaro and Zepbound, have spearheaded the treatment of diabetes and obesity with appetite-suppressing GLP-1 drugs. The drugs’ effectiveness has led to huge demand and profits for the companies and boosted them into a short list of the most valuable companies in the world.

The Biden administration last week reinterpreted a 2003 law that bars Medicare from covering drugs for weight loss, arguing that obesity is “a chronic disease based on changes in medical consensus” and thus opening the door for CMS to be able to cover the drugs for 7.5 million Medicare and Medicaid recipients. In doing so, it has essentially given the Trump team a parting gift: a creative way to cover these popular drugs without revising the law through Congress - if the next CMS administrator and his boss, the HHS secretary, agree, said Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of Medicare policy at KFF, a health policy nonprofit.

Medicare, the insurance program for people 65 and older, allows for the coverage of drugs such as Ozempic to treat diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs promise to change America’s fight against obesity - 4 in 10 Americans are obese - but evidence shows economic and racial disparities in access given the cost of the medications. Access would dramatically widen if government-run health insurance programs uniformly covered the drugs. As it stands, 13 states cover GLP-1 drugs for obesity under Medicaid, insurance for low-income Americans whose coverage and eligibility is determined at the state level.

“There’s solid evidence of the effectiveness of these medications and treating obesity. The real stumbling block for Congress has been the price tag of lifting the statutory prohibition there,” Cubanski said. “Do we tell people with cancer, ‘I’m sorry you can’t have your cancer treatment because it’s too expensive?’ No, but we do that with these new obesity drugs. That raises fundamental questions about equity and fairness.”

Ozempic and similar medications have been shown to help patients shed weight and are also thought to potentially help alleviate addictive cravings beyond food. The drugs, which could require a lifetime of use to maintain their weight-loss effects, have yet to undergo studies of their long-term effects.

Since 2021, Oz has discussed the benefits of weight-loss drugs at least five times across his personal social media, website and TV show, according to a Post review of Oz’s public media.

In a February 2021 segment of his show, a few months before the Food and Drug Administration approved Wegovy for weight management, Oz interviewed Robert Kushner, a co-author of a study that backed the use of diabetes semaglutide drugs for weight loss. Oz did not mention Novo Nordisk funded the study or that Kushner, whom Oz referred to as “a good friend of mine,” was a paid consultant to the company - facts disclosed in the study.

Kushner, a nutrition and obesity doctor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, told The Post he sits on the medical advisory board for Novo Nordisk. “I do not own any stock in the company, hold any patents with the company, nor do I do any promotional speaking for the company,” Kushner wrote in an email. He said money for the study was paid to Northwestern.

A study by health researchers published in September analyzed how media reports about such off-label use of the drugs for weight loss may have created supply shortages. It singled out Oz’s segment with Kushner as leading to a global surge in online search interest for the drugs. “It appears that the Dr. Oz alert coincided with a strong spike in search interest in sixteen countries,” the study said.

In a November 2023 video posted on his TikTok and Instagram accounts, Oz discussed another Novo Nordisk-funded study that had been presented at the American Heart Association conference: Another weight-loss drug, Wegovy, was shown to reduce heart problems in overweight and obese individuals. Speaking to his millions of followers, Oz predicted that “Medicare is going to be the real finish line” in the “big battle” for insurers to cover these weight-loss drugs.

It’s a battle pharmaceutical companies have waged aggressively. Novo Nordisk has spent $4.4 million so far this year and $5.2 million in 2023 on dozens of lobbyists, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics; Eli Lilly has spent $6.4 million so far this year and $8.4 million in 2023. Among their top targets: getting Congress to pass the Treat and Reduce Obesity Act, a bill co-sponsored by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), incoming chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, to allow Medicare to cover obesity drugs.

Skrbkova, the Novo Nordisk spokeswoman, characterized the Biden administration’s move to cover obesity drugs through Medicare and Medicaid as “an important step forward for patients.”

Potential conflicts of interest

Financial disclosures from his failed 2022 U.S. Senate run in Pennsylvania reveal Oz owned UnitedHealth Group stocks worth between $280,000 and $600,000. Oz had campaigned to expand the privatization of Medicare - a move conservatives say would improve insurance benefits but that a growing number of health policy experts contend would result in private insurance companies overbilling the government.

UnitedHealth Group, a health-care behemoth that includes UnitedHealthcare insurance, would probably benefit from any expansion of Medicare Advantage.

Potential conflicts of interest alone are not disqualifying for nominees. The Office of Government Ethics oversees a process for White House appointees to declare financial assets and commit to addressing conflicts as part of an ethics agreement signed before Senate confirmation. The agency also monitors that officials stick to the agreements. The law requires unelected executive branch officials to recuse themselves from decisions when they have a conflict of interest.

Oz’s response to The Post’s inquiry did not address his current views on the privatization of Medicare or whether he still owns health insurance stocks. Oz would be required to submit financial disclosures in connection with his nomination but the Trump transition team has not said when that is expected to occur.

A leading Democrat expressed reservations about Oz’s pending nomination.

“I have serious concerns about his judgment and potential conflicts of interest - remember, this is an individual who has repeatedly promoted quack treatments because he stood to benefit from them financially,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), former chairwoman of the Senate Health Committee, told The Post in a statement.

In October 2023, iHerb, an e-commerce company that sells a range of supplements and wellness products, announced Oz as a “global advisor and stakeholder.” Since then, he has heavily promoted iHerb products across his social media accounts, including in at least 24 TikTok posts, 25 Instagram reels and 20 tweets - as recently as last week. Promotions of iHerb make up about 40 percent of his TikTok posts since he became an adviser to the company.

The supplements include NAD+ to help with “cellular aging,” multivitamins to reduce stress, nootropics for “brain power” and supplements he claimed “probably slowed” the progression of his mother’s Alzheimer’s disease over the years.

Oz’s website displays snippets from his iHerb-sponsored newsletter, including a section titled “Are Semaglutide drugs like Ozempic or Wegovy Right for You?” In June, iHerb launched three supplements co-developed by Oz to treat common side effects of GLP-1 drugs.

Some health-care experts say that Oz’s elevation to CMS administrator would provide him a bully pulpit from which to promote unscientific information.

Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health nonprofit, and a former CDC acting director, said: “It would be very hard to trust that the decisions coming down were based on the best available evidence.”