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The Trump administration plans to invest $200 billion into Medicaid to preserve the program and reduce rising costs, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Sunday.
“There’s been a 50% increase in the cost of Medicaid over the last five years, so I’m trying to save this beautiful program, this noble effort, to help folks, giving them a hand up,” Oz said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Oz described Medicaid as a key support for vulnerable populations, referring to former Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s standard of a moral government.
“If Medicaid isn’t able to take care of the people for whom it was designed, the young children, in the dawn of their life, those who are in the twilight of their life, the seniors and those who are disabled living in the shadows, as Hubert Humphrey said, then we’re not satisfying the fundamental obligation of a moral government,” he said.
As part of broader efforts to cut health care costs, President Donald Trump has imposed a 25 percent tariff on imports from India and introduced a 15 percent tariff on medicines imported from the European Union. He is also seeking a most-favored-nation pricing model for prescription drugs to bring U.S. prices in line with those in other countries.
“About two-thirds of bankruptcies in America are caused by health care expenses,” Oz said. “About a third of people, when they go to the pharmacy, they leave empty-handed. They can’t afford the medication.”
Oz said Trump is pushing for pricing parity. Pharmaceutical companies, he added, “understand the reality of this problem” and are in discussions with the federal government.
The administration’s broader Medicaid reform, included in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, also contains a requirement for able-bodied recipients to work 80 hours per month. Oz said those hours could include job training, caregiving, or school attendance.
Oz also noted that technology will assist recipients in documenting their work and connecting them with employment opportunities.
“What if we go beyond just proving that you tried the work to actually say, ‘You know what, you didn’t work enough, but we can actually help you by connecting you through an employment office?'” he said.