by Scott Creighton
Donald Trump has picked TV celebrity Dr. Oz to head up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in spite of the fact that he 1. has no experience running such a large agency of any kind and 2. he was recently busted shilling a fake weight loss program to his fans.
Of course, to Dr. Oz, that means TIME TO PRIVATIZE those effective programs so BIG BUSINESS can make some glorious money!
'Dr. Oz has weighed in on Medicare policy, helping to write a 2020 opinion column in Forbes
arguing for a universal health coverage system, in which every American
not covered by Medicaid would be enrolled in a private Medicare
Advantage plan. The coverage expansion, the column said, would be
financed by an “affordable 20 percent payroll tax,” and would eliminate
employer health coverage and the government Medicare program.
That
strategy would be far out of the mainstream of conservative health
policy. In 2019, Vice President Kamala Harris, then a candidate for
president, proposed a version
of a “Medicare for all” plan with similarities to Dr. Oz’s 2020 idea.
Instead of replacing private coverage with a government-run system, as
some of her Democratic rivals had done, Ms. Harris called for allowing
people to choose between a government Medicare program and plans modeled
on Medicare Advantage.' NYT