Dr. Oz supported health insurance mandates and promoted Obamacare before Senate

On Mar 13, 2022

A review by CNN’s KFile of hundreds of Oz’s television, radio, print and social media appearances over more than a decade found that Oz has supported a health insurance mandate for “everyone … to be in the system” and backed government-provided health care coverage for poor Americans and for minors. Of the health care systems he liked most, Oz has cited Germany’s and Switzerland’s, which utilize mandatory universal systems administered by private companies.

Many of Oz’s statements on health care align with some of the key tenets of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. In a review of his statements, CNN’s KFile found that Oz praised how the law dramatically increased the number of insured Americans, while later criticizing it for not being well understood and not tackling the costs of health care. He also promoted Obamacare in a 2010 ad for the California Endowment, a left-leaning organization that says on its website it’s dedicated to improving the well-being of Californians.

Brittany Yanick, a spokeswoman for the Oz campaign, told CNN’s KFile that Oz “does not support a big government takeover of the health insurance industry” and that he “would not have voted for Obamacare.”

Oz “believes that the American healthcare system is in need of improvement” but that Obamacare was “the wrong one,” Yanick said in an email.

Republicans largely abandoned messaging and plans on health care after they repeatedly failed to repeal and replace Obamacare. The party’s 2016 platform, which it adopted again in 2020, advocated repealing Obamacare, saying that “it imposed a Euro-style bureaucracy to manage its unworkable, budget-busting, conflicting provisions.” The GOP platform also laid out the party’s goal to “reduce mandates.”

Oz is running in one of the most closely watched races of the 2022 midterms against a large field of candidates, including David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, in the Republican primary on May 17. A Fox News poll from early March shows McCormick in the lead, with 24% of Republican primary voters in Pennsylvania saying they would vote for him if the primary were held that day and Oz at 15%, though a majority of voters said they could change their minds about whom they’re supporting.

Before running for the Senate, Oz was the host of a well-known daytime show, “The Dr. Oz Show,” which first aired in 2009 after Oprah Winfrey frequently featured him on her own show. Oz’s brand as “America’s Doctor” has faced scrutiny from the medical community over treatments he promotes — including from a group of doctors who in 2015 accused Oz of “manifesting an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.”

Oz backed health insurance mandates

As a physician, Oz advocated that everyone in America have insurance and has said the government should provide health care coverage to Americans who cannot afford it

“It should be mandatory that everybody in America have healthcare coverage. If you can’t afford it, we have to give it to you,” Oz told The Seattle Times in 2009.

He also frequently described the moral dilemmas he faced to provide care to…

Dr. Oz supported health insurance mandates and promoted Obamacare before Senate

Oz backed health insurance mandates

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