Updated: Feb. 20
Mehmet Oz, M.D., says he will divest from insurers, providers and drugmakers if he earns confirmation from the Senate to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), new ethic disclosure filings show.
Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon and onetime television host who mounted an unsuccessful run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, holds stock in UnitedHealth Group, HCA Healthcare, Abbvie, Eli Lilly, Cencora, Danaher and McKesson. He also holds stock in tech companies Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia as well as healthcare startups.
His assets are worth anywhere from $95 million to $334 million. Each asset falls within a range but is not listed as a specific value, leaving the exact value of his assets as unclear.
Disclosures from his Senate campaign run showed Oz once owned up to $500,000 in UnitedHealth Group (UNH) stock and up to $100,000 in CVS stock. He now owns up to $600,000 in UNH but nothing in CVS. He also holds up to $100,000 in HCA Healthcare and Abbvie. Oz has up to $26 million in Amazon
A filing (PDF) details the numerous companies he will resign from. Oz will divest partnership equity in Cardiology Partners, a healthcare practice, as well as divest or forfeit class P2 units.
He will also resign as an advisor to nutritional supplement company iHerb, artificial intelligence company and Alphabet spinoff Sandbox AQ, botanical product company Housey Pharma and the American Association of Thoracic Surgery.
He will keep a financial interest in Oz Property Holdings, Oz Media and iHerb Oz Partners but resign from his positions with each group.
As for his positions on several production companies, he will keep his role but not receive compensation for any services.
He receives royalties from HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster for books he authored. He also owns four residential real estate properties in Turkey with his family, the filing says. He receives payments from a patent through the New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Hospital.
Oz also owns $1 million in Bitcoin and up to $500,000 in a Bitcoin ETF, but did not state he would sell the digital currency. The wording in one filing indicates he may not sell iHerb stock, even if confirmed as CMS head, reported The New York Times. Oz regularly promotes iHerb on his social media accounts.
Like Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Oz is an unorthodox pick to lead federal health programs. He has received criticism—on a smaller scale than RFK Jr.—from Democratic senators ahead of his confirmation process.
They raised issue with past comments by Oz, where he expressed his support for Medicare Advantage for All, seemingly suggesting eliminating traditional Medicare.
“Given your financial ties to private insurers, combined with your view that the traditional Medicare program is ‘highly dysfunctional’ and your advocacy for eliminating it entirely, it is not clear that you are qualified for this critical job,” the senators wrote (PDF) to Oz.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, questioned (PDF) his “hostile” record on abortion and his belief the Supreme Court rightly overturned Roe v. Wade and other comments equating abortion to murder.