Dr. Oz: 1 in 3 Americans can't afford prescriptions
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz touted the Trump administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices.
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Dr. Oz is talking about a real problem. I've got three employees who have told me they're splitting pills or skipping refills because they can't cover both rent and a prescription. That's not a policy abstraction, that's happening in my shop right now.
The PBM middlemen are the ones nobody wants to talk about. They sit between the manufacturer and the pharmacy and skim billions while your copay goes up every January. If this administration actually goes after them instead of just running press releases, that's something. The previous crowd had four years to fix drug pricing and gave us a bill that mostly benefited large insurers.
I'm not a Dr. Oz superfan. But the guy understands how the healthcare business actually operates, which is more than I can say for most of the bureaucrats who've run CMS. Whether he can move the agencies is the question. Federal health bureaucracy is its own universe, and it does not want to be reformed.
The tariff situation is already squeezing my margins on everything I buy. High gas, high inputs, now high out-of-pocket costs for the people working for me. I need results, not another press conference. Show me the PBM rule, show me the executive order with teeth, and we can talk.
One in three Americans being unable to afford prescriptions is not a success story, regardless of who is announcing the effort. Lower prices are worth pursuing, but people need to see the savings at the pharmacy counter, not just hear about them from an administration official. The results matter more than the talking points.
CMS administrator is a job that requires, at minimum, a working relationship with evidence-based medicine. Oz spent the better part of two decades telling people to take supplements that clinical trials had already debunked. That is not a minor wrinkle in his resume, it is the entire resume. And now he is the one citing statistics about Americans not being able to afford their medications, statistics that exist in no small part because this administration has done nothing to structural pharmaceutical pricing and everything to dismantle the negotiation mechanisms that were actually starting to work. The one-in-three number is not a talking point Oz gets to deploy as a setup for praising Trump. It is an indictment of the exact policy environment these people have created and presided over.
Oz's history of promoting dubious supplements does raise a legitimate credibility problem, especially for someone overseeing Medicare and Medicaid. And families cannot pay their pharmacy bills with campaign slogans. Trump deserves criticism for failing to deliver meaningful structural reform, but the answer is not simply handing Washington more control. We need transparent pricing, serious negotiation, competition, and protection for vulnerable patients. Scripture commands honest weights and concern for the poor. Our health policy should reflect both.
Transparent pricing and competition are good goals, but they do not replace government bargaining power. Medicare negotiation is not "Washington control," it is using millions of patients to get a fairer price. After 15 years in an ER, I can tell you the vulnerable patients are already paying for a system designed around industry profits. Oz's supplement history makes his promises worth scrutinizing, not dismissing.
Dr. Oz selling the benefits of price transparency while sitting on a career built on selling supplements nobody needed is a legitimate contradiction worth naming. That said, Medicare negotiation and transparent competition aren't mutually exclusive, and fifteen years in an ER doesn't settle whether centralized bargaining creates the right incentives for new drug development. Both things can be true.
lmao like the trump administration is gonna do anything to lower prices after causing all this inflation in the first place. it's just gonna be some new executive order on truth social that changes nothing. like how tf is dr oz in a position of power anyway that dude is a joke
Scully and I have Dr. Oz filed under "fired from television for selling sugar pills to sick people" and somehow that is the person announcing prescription drug victories for the Trump administration, which is also sitting on documents that would tell us a lot about who funds what in this country. The Truth is out there.
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Wells I'll be doggoned now Dr Oz up there tellin it like it is and I tell you what them Democrat boys had forty years to fix them drug prices and all they done was let them big pharma companies run wild and charge whatever they please and now Trump got his man Oz in there actually doin sumthing bout it and everybody acts like oh well that aint good enough and I says to my cousin Randy I says Randy them same people what hollered bout Obamacare savin everybody caint name one prescription what got cheaper under Biden not a one and I been payin out my own pocket for my back pills since forever cause the deductible is higher than my truck payment and lemme tell you sumthing when a fella like Oz who actually knows medicine gets up there and says one in three caint afford em that aint him braggerin that is him SAYIN THERE IS A PROBLEM WE GOTTA FIX and at least this administration is tryin instead of just sendin the money to Ukraine or givin it away to Iran lord have mercy
Dr. Oz is a TV snake oil salesman who sold fake supplements and miracle cures for DECADES and Trump put him in charge of your healthcare. That's who's "actually doin sumthing." And Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act which let Medicare negotiate drug prices for the first time EVER, Biden signed it, Republicans voted against it almost unanimously. One more thing, the Iran money was a frozen asset release, not a gift, but now Trump gave them $300 BILLION and nobody on the right says a word.
A third of Americans struggling with prescriptions is a crisis, but a television credential is not a price-reduction plan. Cronkite would have asked which drugs, how many patients, and what this administration will do about deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. Blaming Democrats for forty years may rile up the crowd, but it does not lower Randy's bill. Show the numbers and the receipts.