Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz, M.D., sought to make inroads with the bristling physician community Monday by commiserating on longstanding pain points, like prior authorization and lagging pay, in between defenses of federal spending cuts and the Make America Healthy Again movement.
The administrator was a guest speaker at this weekend’s Interim Meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates.
There, the surgeon, television star and now health policy leader told attendees that the profession has been beaten down by forces both external and internal, driving burnout and diminishing clinicians’ ability to connect with their patients. Particularly within the past five years, he said, there have been times “where I think medicine could have played a louder, more powerful role, but it’s been pushed back by bureaucratic efforts to codify us, corral us, contain us.”
He broadly called for his “brethren” to help his agency and the administration address those issues by providing feedback on policy points and be willing to “police the system” by speaking out when longstanding practices and institutions aren’t working.
“I believe many physicians have lost their mojo, and it has happened because sometimes people in my position have done things that made the job less desirable,” he said. “We created bureaucratic hassle, we corporatized medicine … there’s a move to remove, to diminish the professionalism in medicine. So I came today to ask you to come fight with me.”
Oz’s comments came at a time of bubbling tension between established medical bodies and those at the head of the federal government.
Leading lawmakers in Congress have harshly criticized the AMA over its handing of the Current Procedural Terminology coding system and positions over controversial medical issues like gender-affirming care. The association has publicly taken stances against major policy decisions like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s more than $900 billion in Medicaid cuts and hesitancy to address expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s heavy hand in longstanding public health practices such as childhood vaccines and broader disdain for established medical institutions have reportedly riled much of the AMA’s membership.
The tension was present at the meeting, with the AMA’s new CEO John Whyte, M.D., in his own address alluding to misinformation, politicized science and the association “fiercely defending the patient-physician relationship from interference—whether it comes from politics, algorithms or bureaucracy.”
President Bobby Mukkamala, M.D., acknowledged calls from the delegates during its last meeting for AMA’s leadership “to speak louder” in Washington and outlined areas in which the association had opposed “non-science nonsense,” but also noted the importance of “finding common ground to advance the goals of physicians for the good of our patients.” A statement from Mukkamala released after Oz’s address sought a similar balance of cooperation and policy dissent.
Ahead of Oz’s address, AMA leadership addressed murmurs of protest by warning members that disruptions to the speech could lead to revoked credentials, Politico reported Monday. The speech itself garnered only a single prominent boo, when Oz broached the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and multiple smatterings of applause that often followed consensus physician pain points.
Oz asks physicians to 'push back on orthodoxy'
Oz, for his part, cast a more welcoming message to the attendees compared to what they may have heard from many MAHA-aligned figures. Whereas RFK Jr. has had harsh words about the federal workers and experts under his purview, Oz told the audience that the HHS workers he’s met are “hardworking, diligent, sharp as a tack. … They have an ability to actually create wonderful solutions if they get the right feedback.”
On MAHA more broadly, Oz told attendees that the movement’s skepticism and willingness to challenge the status quo should be a model for a profession that knows there’s room for improvement.
“Could MAHA be a force for good in our nation that might actually empower physicians to take a greater role?” he asked. “I feel strongly the answer is yes, because to me MAHA is defined by one word. One word, and that word is curiosity. Are you willing to do what a scientist should do and push back on orthodoxy? Ask the extra question, which is what mothers always do because they care and they love their families? [We should] do the same kinds of things for our profession.”
From there, Oz touted the administration’s work to secure concessions from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. For the former, he pointed to a voluntary pledge over the summer to reduce the number of services subject to prior authorization, which he later described as “the long arm of insurance.” For the latter, he highlighted more recent agreements with companies like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to cut the prices on weight loss drugs and stressed the need for stakeholders to ensure equitable access.
“Why is the No. 1 ZIP code for GLP-1 consumption 10021, which is the upper east side of Manhattan?” he asked. “We should be using these medications, if we’re going to use them, across the board in a way that makes sense for democracy, and makes sense for a country that will always take care of its most vulnerable people, as all great countries do.”
Oz said the administration intends to continue pursuing such voluntary commitments from the private sector over dictating policy via legislation or rulemaking.
As for rulemaking, the administrator referenced initial steps within the Outpatient Prospective Payment System proposed rule designating certain services to be site neutral, which he described as “a major issue for us.” He was also blunt about the reasoning behind the Physician Fee Schedule’s efficiency adjustment and payment reductions for some physicians that have been decried by the AMA.
“People like me, specialists, took a pay cut, you know, 2.5%, because what we’re doing is getting more and more efficient and we want to pay people for the time they spend, not some arbitrary numbers that are harder to define,” he said.
“So we took that money and we put it into primary care medicine, where I don’t think we pay enough to folks … Nobody is going into primary care,” he added, to some applause.
More funding isn't the answer, Oz says
A sizable portion of Oz’s policy defense centered on Republicans and Trump’s sweeping pullback of funds from federal insurance programs.
On the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s coverage restrictions and funding cuts, Oz evoked Republicans’ refrain of “fraud, waste and abuse” and told the attendees that the ultimate goal is to “save Medicaid” and preserve physicians’ role in care.
“It’s very easy to say throw more money at it,” he said. “That’s a very comfortable thing to do. That’s like taking a patient who doesn’t benefit from a treatment and just throwing more of it at them.
“We were going to spend $5.4 trillion more on legalized money laundering from states in the form of state directed payments and provider taxes. That’s not good for you, because when the music stops and everyone has to sit down, guess who doesn’t get a share? You. You’re the easiest person to cut, and that’s exactly what happens when you bankrupt the system.”
On other items like national Medicaid work requirements, Oz said the program “was never created for able-bodied individuals” and that the country “can’t have 20 million people who are sitting at home … on Medicaid and expect the system to survive.”
On the latest debates among lawmakers around the expiring enhanced subsidies for ACA premiums, Oz said the money funneled into Obamacare during the pandemic had distorted the program by fueling numerous sign-ups, oftentimes improper, for people who weren’t even using their coverage.
“The fraud is so rampant it has dramatically increased the cost of the system,” he said. “And all we hear is extend the subsidies—that’s not the problem, the issue is how do you take care of people who need the care. That’s the goal.”
Further, he continued, “if you pour money into the system without caring about the cost, the prices go up because they can be charged more. And what happens then [is] people who have to pay out of their own pocket don’t have the money to do it. That’s the problem we’re facing now.”
Oz closed his address by emphasizing the contribution healthcare practitioners have in bolstering the national economy and again called for physicians to be forthcoming in addressing the healthcare industry’s systemic issues in their personal lives and practices as well as through broader advocacy.
“We can make this work, but I have to have you involved,” he said. “You must speak up.”
The AMA’s Mukkamala, in his statement addressing Oz’s speech, thanked the administrator for joining and “outlining a vision for collaboration.”
“His physician’s perspective on prior authorization, documentation, hospital payments, and lagging physician reimbursement resonated across the House [of Delegates],” he said. “At the same time, we will remain engaged where we have differences: opposing Medicaid cuts, advocating for a permanent Medicare payment fix that reflects the cost of running a practice, and preventing coverage loss while rooting out fraud. We welcome his call for feedback and look forward to working together on evidence‑based solutions that protect patients and sustain physicians.”