Health
Senate Confirms Dr. Oz to Ovrsee Medicare and Medicaid
The Senate on Thursday confirmed Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor, 53-45 and along party lines to lead Medicare and Medicaid, which insure nearly half of all Americans.
The future of both programs is the subject of fierce debate: Republicans are contemplating significant cuts to Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income Americans. The Trump administration and G.O.P. lawmakers have proposed sizable reductions in Medicaid spending in part to find savings to pay for President Trump’s tax-cut package.
Dr. Oz, 64, has for years been a vocal proponent of Medicare Advantage, the private insurance plans for older Americans, despite federal inquiries and lawmakers’ concerns that insurers have overbilled the government by tens of billions of dollars a year. He promoted it on his TV show and acted as a broker for one company that sells the plan.
At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee last month, he seemed to acknowledge problems with Medicare Advantage, and tried to reassure senators that there was a “new sheriff in town.”
Democrats on the committee grilled him at length about the potential steep cuts to Medicaid, which could result in a substantial number of people becoming ineligible for health coverage.
In recent days, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has overseen deep cuts to the Health and Human Services Department, including laying off roughly 10,000 employees on top of another 10,000 buyouts, retirements and departures early on in the new Trump administration.
The cutbacks also affect Dr. Oz’s agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which has a budget of about $1.5 trillion in annual spending. Still, Dr. Oz has given few clues as to what if any changes he has planned.
Dr. Oz’s ability to secure enough votes for confirmation was up in the air until recently. Then, earlier this week Senator Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican, said he had decided to support his nomination because Dr. Oz told him that he would no longer support transgender care for minors and was “unequivocally pro-life.” Mr. Hawley had publicly said he was withholding his support over Dr. Oz’s previous positions on these issues.
Senators largely sidestepped criticism of Dr. Oz’s extensive and often murky financial ties to companies he will oversee in his new position.
He and his wife are wealthy. All told, his business and family ventures are valued in the neighborhood of roughly $90 million to $335 million.
In an attempt to avoid conflicts, he announced in February he would sell his interest in more than 70 companies and investment funds.
He has made tens of millions of dollars over the years pitching dietary supplements and promoting health-related companies on his television show.
The investments he said he planned to sell included stakes in UnitedHealth Group, the giant conglomerate that is the nation’s largest provider of private Medicare plans; Inception Fertility Holdings, a privately held company that operates a chain of clinics; and Amazon, which has a vast reach that now includes an online pharmacy and sells myriad medical devices and equipment.
In addition, he pledged to resign from various paid advisory jobs.
Still, the breadth of his financial ties to countless health-related companies has prompted lawmakers and ethics experts to express doubts about his ability to be independent.
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Health
FDA says ‘dangerous’ substance known as ‘gas station heroin’ poses major risk to young people
The head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is sounding the alarm on a dangerous drug referred to as “gas station heroin,” that can lead to serious harm, including death.
FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary sent a letter to his colleagues last week to draw their attention to what he called a “dangerous and growing health trend” facing the nation and young people. Makary said there is an increasing number of adverse events involving products that contain tianeptine.
Tianeptine, often called “gas station heroin,” is sold in gas stations through a variety of products, despite the drug not being approved by the FDA.
“I am very concerned,” Makary wrote. “I want the public to be especially aware of this dangerous product and the serious and continuing risk it poses to America’s youth.”
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The “supplement” commonly goes by the brand names ZaZa or Tianna Red. (Dekalb County Sheriff’s Office)
The products are typically sold at convenience stores, gas stations, vape shops and online retailers, and go by names like Tianaa, ZaZa, Neptune’s Fix, Pegasus and TD Red.
Makary said the FDA is following the distribution and sale of products that contain tianeptine but called on his colleagues to disseminate information about the drug while appreciating the magnitude of its underlying danger.
Tianeptine is licensed and marketed in some countries as an atypical antidepressant, and in countries where it is approved, the typical labeled dose to treat depression is 12.5 mg orally, three times per day, Makary said.
When higher doses are taken, they can produce euphoria. Some countries have taken steps to restrict how tianeptine is prescribed or dispensed and have even revised the labels to warn people of its potential addiction.
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The FDA is warning about the dangers of tianeptine. (REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo)
In the U.S., though, tianeptine is not listed as part of the Controlled Substances Act.
The drug is often taken recreationally, though if stopped abruptly, users could experience withdrawal symptoms similar to those associated with opioid withdrawal – craving, sweating, diarrhea and more.
If tianeptine is ingested, Makary wrote, adverse events could include agitation, coma, confusion, death, drowsiness, hypertension, nausea, respiratory depression, sweating, tachycardia and vomiting.
Two years ago, New Jersey health officials warned that two products sold as dietary supplements in gas stations and online – Neptune’s Elixir and ZaZa Red – had caused a spike in illnesses.
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New Jersey health officials raised concerns in 2023 about Neptune’s Fix Elixir, a product containing tianeptine, after a cluster of illnesses was reported in connection with the product. (FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs, Health Fraud Branch)
Between June and November 2023, there were 20 reported cases of tianeptine causing “severe clinical effects” in New Jersey, as noted in a Feb. 1 alert from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In 2023, the FDA posted an alert warning of the dangers of Neptune’s Fix or any other product containing tianeptine.
“FDA has received severe adverse event reports after use of Neptune’s Fix products, including seizures and loss of consciousness leading to hospitalization,” the agency stated.
“FDA considers tianeptine to be a substance that does not meet the statutory definition of a dietary ingredient and is an unsafe food additive. The FDA is aware of several serious adverse event reports associated with tianeptine.”
On Jan. 28, 2024, Neptune Resources, LLC, the maker of Neptune’s Fix, issued a voluntary recall of its products due to the presence of tianeptine — but experts are warning that other products may also contain the drug.
Anyone who is using tianeptine or a product containing tianeptine and is experiencing withdrawal symptoms can call the National Poison Control Center at 1-800-222-1222 or seek emergency medical assistance, experts advised.
Fox News Digital’s Melissa Rudy contributed to this report.
President Trump will sign an executive order on Monday aimed at lowering some drug prices in the United States by aligning them with what other wealthy countries pay, he said on Truth Social on Sunday evening.
The proposal he described, which alone cannot shift federal policy, is what he calls a “most favored nation” pricing model. Mr. Trump did not provide details about which type of insurance the plan would apply to or how many drugs it would target, but he indicated that the United States should pay the lowest price among its peer countries.
“Our Country will finally be treated fairly, and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before,” he wrote in his social media post.
Any such plan will most likely be subject to challenges in court, and it is not clear whether it will pass legal muster, especially without action by Congress.
In his first term, Mr. Trump tried unsuccessfully to enact a version of this idea for Medicare, the health insurance program that covers 68 million Americans who are over 65 or have disabilities. That plan would have applied only to 50 drugs, administered at clinics and hospitals, that are paid for by Medicare. A federal court blocked it, ruling that the administration had skipped steps in the policymaking process.
The pharmaceutical industry bitterly opposes the idea, which would almost certainly cut into its profits, and has been lobbying against it as discussions of the policy have regained steam in Washington in recent weeks. Companies have warned that such a policy would lead them to spend less on research, depriving patients of new medicines.
“Government price setting in any form is bad for American patients,” Alex Schriver, an official at the drug industry’s main lobbying group, PhRMA, said in a statement. He added, “Policymakers should focus on fixing the flaws in the U.S. system, not importing failed policies from abroad.”
Mr. Trump’s embrace of the idea sets him apart from most Republicans, who have tended to be skeptical of government price setting. Democratic lawmakers have proposed versions of the idea.
Ameet Sarpatwari, an expert in pharmaceutical policy at Harvard Medical School, said that Mr. Trump was tapping into an idea that had “populist appeal.”
Mr. Trump has long complained that the United States pays much more than other wealthy countries do for the same drugs. And he is right. In the United States, prices for brand-name drugs are three times as high, on average, as those in peer nations.
That is in spite of the fact that much of the research that leads to new drugs takes place in American laboratories and hospitals.
Drugmakers generate a substantial majority of their worldwide profits from sales in the United States and typically design their business strategy around the U.S. market.
Pharmaceutical companies argue that the higher prices in the United States come with an added benefit: Industry-funded analyses have found that patients in the United States get medicines faster, and with fewer insurance restrictions, than those in other countries.
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