Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania expressed openness to confirm his erstwhile Republican opponent Dr Mehmet Oz, whom President-elect Donald Trump nominated to lead the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid.
Fetterman beat Oz in an intensely personal race for Senate in 2022. During the election, Fetterman ribbed Oz for not living in Pennsylvania but rather neighboring New Jersey. Fetterman, who had suffered a stroke during the campaign, received intense criticism for using closed captioning.
But Fetterman told The Independent in an interview that he would be open to voting for Oz.
“Do you think he's my first choice?” he said. “Do you think Trump is my first one? But it’s like yeah, here we are.”
Trump announced his nomination of Oz, who along with being a surgeon hosted his own daytime television show, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and hinted at potential cuts to programs.
CMS insures more than 160 million people through Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Health Insurance Marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
“Our broken Healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget. Dr Oz will be a leader in incentivizing Disease Prevention, so we get the best results in the World for every dollar we spend on Healthcare in our Great Country,” Trump said in his statement. “He will also cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget.”
Trump repeatedly campaigned on protecting Social Security and Medicare, often hitting other Republicans who wanted to slash entitlements. But Trump mostly avoided discussing Medicaid throughout his 2024 campaign.
Fetterman did not seem worried about potential cuts, though.
“Well, cutting waste and fraud that I think that's a good thing, right?” he told The Independent, adding that if Oz could get rid of waste and fraud to make the programs more efficient, “then I'm not going to vote against that.”
Oz is the latest of several television figures Trump has nominated to serve in his administration. He tapped Pete Hegseth, a longtime figure on Fox News, to lead the Pentagon. Trump also nominated Sean Duffy, a former congressman from Wisconsin who now appears on Fox, to lead the Department of Transportation.
In addition to Oz, Trump also tapped Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime promoter of the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism, to be his secretary of Health and Human Services.
