Dr. Mehmet Oz delivered his opening remarks at his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Finance Committee on Friday.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you. And Dr. Oz, as you began or before you began, you are certainly welcome to introduce your family.
00:05You might recognize them. They're sitting behind me. This whole slew behind me is the family. One couldn't get here because of a baby at home.
00:13But my wife Lisa, right there,
00:16I should point out, I married her in the wisest decision of my life 40 years ago.
00:22And if I can just come close to being that insightful when I'm administering Medicare,
00:27if confirmed by this committee, then I think at least begin to battle some of the challenges we will face.
00:34Please proceed.
00:37Chairman Grapeville, Ranking Member Wyden, thank you very much for inviting me to appear in front of this committee today.
00:42I've met with everybody on this committee at one point or another and I'm hoping some of those conversations will inform the committee hearing.
00:49I want to thank President Trump for his passionate desire to make America healthy again and for nominating me to support that vision.
00:57I want to thank Secretary Kennedy for having the confidence in my capacity to make a meaningful and measurable difference in the health and well-being of the American people.
01:07Let me start off with one simple premise.
01:10All great societies, all great societies, protect their most vulnerable.
01:16And I would argue we are a great people.
01:19With that in mind, I commit to doing whatever I can, working tirelessly to ensure that CMS provides Americans with access to superb care,
01:28especially Americans who are most vulnerable, our young, our disabled, and our elderly.
01:34For me, this commitment has been a lifelong passion.
01:38My physician father, when he came here, when he immigrated, saw America as a beacon of hope, a land of opportunity where everyone's decisions mattered.
01:48That imbued me a confidence that I mattered, that I had agency.
01:51For example, I was a student athlete at Harvard, Senator Wyden, like you.
01:56That was the original Make America Healthy Again concept, that you just would work hard, play hard, eat well, and watch your body thrive.
02:04But because of my experience in college, I was surprised when I matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania in medical school that there was no nutrition class.
02:13So because I thought I had agency, I ran for school president, I won, and I created that class.
02:20I became, as well, a student at the Wharton Business School.
02:24And while there, I learned the skills necessary to manage large organizations like at CMS,
02:29where we have nearly 7,000 folks, hardworking, career civil servants, and 40,000 outside contractors involved with the delivery of our services.
02:39Next, I began my career at Columbia University.
02:41And for those of you who don't know where Columbia Medical School is, it's in uptown Manhattan in an area called Spanish Harlem.
02:49At the time I was training, it was the murder capital of the world, an area heavily populated by Medicaid patients.
02:55And I saw firsthand how our services, our healthcare system, underserved these communities.
03:03So I went to work.
03:04I began developing high-tech solutions, life-saving medical breakthroughs, ranging from mechanical hearts to the MitraClip,
03:11which is a small device you can put into the heart without stopping the heart that fixes heart valves.
03:17And it saves lives in one large study, 50% reduction in death at half the price.
03:23Those are the kinds of advances that I wanted to be involved in.
03:26But I also pushed for low-tech solutions, like getting my patients to use preventive strategies, healthier lifestyles,
03:32in order to recover from the heart surgery that I was often performing on them.
03:36And then Lisa, my wife, and I started Health Corps, which is a teen foundation which has touched the lives of millions of Americans over the last 20 years.
03:44Senator Bennett, working in schools, as we discussed in your office, tirelessly trying to get young, energetic kids to play a role,
03:51college graduates, in the well-being of kids just a few years younger than teenagers.
03:56And all along, I was working hard to publish what I found.
03:59In fact, publishing hundreds of peer-reviewed academic articles in some of our top journals,
04:04a bunch of New York Times best-selling books, as Senator Grapeville mentioned, and all of these culminated in the creation of The Dr. Rao Show.
04:13We hosted health advocates from all walks of life, and we did it well,
04:18which is why we won 10 Emmy Awards for outstanding work over the 13 years of the program.
04:23I share my story with you for a simple reason, to highlight that everything I have done in my life,
04:28educationally and professionally, has prepared me for this precise moment in time,
04:34which I believe offers a monumental opportunity and a challenge for us at CMS.
04:40My TV audience has heard me say this many times, but many of you are too busy to watch television, so I'll repeat it,
04:46that I believe that a physician has a responsibility to tell patients what they need to know, even if the message is uncomfortable.
04:54So here's some painful truths that should concern everyone in this room.
04:59I'll list them quickly. Healthcare expenditures are growing 2 to 3 percent faster than our economy.
05:05Not sustainable. The Medicare Trust Fund will be insolvent within a decade.
05:09That's the 2.9 percent taken out of your paycheck.
05:12Medicaid is the number one expense item in most states.
05:16Consuming 30 percent of those state budgets, and that's crowding out essential services like schools and public safety
05:22that many of you have spent your careers trying to develop.
05:25A health care cost per person in this country is twice that of other developed nations.
05:31So it's not just about the money. We're already putting twice as much money into the system.
05:36Why is it costing us so much? Because of chronic disease.
05:39And those chronic diseases, and we made it easy to be sick in America, are linked to poor lifestyle choices.
05:45And they drive three quarters of the 1.7 trillion dollars that CMS spends a year to support Americans' health.
05:5343 percent of Americans are obese. That's the major driver of those lifestyle chronic morbidities.
05:59That's quadrupled since I was in college.
06:03More importantly, we're twice as obese as Europeans. We're nine times as obese as the Japanese.
06:11And three quarters of our young people cannot even qualify for military service.
06:16Our maternal mortality rate, and I want to hammer this point home because we talked about it and Senator Hassell,
06:21we talked about this when she stepped out, but she was there a second ago,
06:25is it puts us in dead last place behind 50 other countries.
06:30Maternal mortality rate, women dying during childbirth, medical errors, number three cause of death in America.
06:37These are some of the reasons why our life expectancy is now five years shorter than comparable countries.
06:44This public health crisis threatens our national security. Why?
06:47Because it adds to the national debt that is defeating us from within, crowding out other essential services.
06:53And we are, in addition, witnessing fellow Americans suffering needlessly, which I believe is a moral failing.
07:00As a heart surgeon, I can attest that the most expensive care we give is bad care.
07:08You pay to do the wrong thing. You pay to fix what was done wrong.
07:11Then you pay to deal with all the complications. It's immoral. It's wrong. And it's expensive.
07:16We have a generational opportunity to fix our health care system and help people stay healthy for longer.
07:23That's why President Trump wants to love and cherish Medicare and Medicaid,
07:27because he believes every American should get the care they want, need, and deserve.
07:32Now, to achieve this mission, CMS should work with Congress to find efficiencies that can help stabilize our insurance markets,
07:39which will make it easier and more affordable for Americans to adopt healthy lifestyles.
07:44I would argue, and I know you all agree, America is too great a nation for small dreams.
07:50So here's some three, some big ideas. I'm going to limit it to three so I can get to the questions that I want to pursue if I'm confirmed by the Senate.
07:59First, we should empower beneficiaries with better tools and more transparency,
08:04so the American people can better navigate their health as well as dealing with the complex health care system we have created for them.
08:11As an example, I think President Trump's executive order on transparency shifts power to the American people.
08:18Let's make America great again and make it healthy again by informing people so they can be in charge of their well-being.
08:24Second, we should incentivize doctors and all health care providers to optimize care,
08:29but we have to do that with real-time information while they're taking care of patients and within their workflow.
08:36Artificial intelligence, I believe, can help. It can liberate doctors and nurses from all the paperwork,
08:41which, by the way, is as much time they spend on paperwork as taking care of patients.
08:44They should focus on patients as better use of their time.
08:47And third, let's be aggressive in modernizing our tools to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse.
08:53This will stop unscrupulous people from stealing from vulnerable Americans and extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund.
09:00I ask your permission to start sprinting after these goals so together we can provide access to better care,
09:07deliver better outcomes, and make America healthy again.
09:10I look forward to your questions and I pray for your support. Thank you, sir.