Retiree Notes: Winter 2025
Concerns grow over nominee to lead Medicare and Medicaid
Donald Trump has nominated Mehmet Oz—more commonly known by his TV moniker “Dr. Oz”—to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the government agency that administers Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
A significant concern by patient advocacy groups is that Oz has invested tens of millions of dollars in health care, tech, and food companies, posing serious conflicts of interest. His holdings include a stake in United Health Group, a company beset by controversy over its high rate of claim denials.
Oz gained national recognition in 2009 when he became a regular part of the Oprah Winfrey Show. In his own spin-off, The Dr. Oz Show, he dispensed nutritional and lifestyle advice, portraying himself as a trusted doctor who explained health matters in an approachable way.
Unfortunately, his show often blurred the lines between medical advice and advertising, failing to make clear to his audience how closely he worked with the companies he pitched. This resulted in multiple lawsuits that alleged he made misleading claims by promoting products of questionable medical value. Several of the companies he promoted drew the attention of federal regulators.
United Health Group is one of the largest health care companies in the nation and arguably the most important business partner of CMS, through which it is the leading provider of commercial health plans available to Medicare beneficiaries.
UnitedHealth also offers managed-care plans under Medicaid, the joint state-federal program for low-income people, and sells plans on government-run marketplaces set up via the Affordable Care Act. Oz also had smaller stakes in CVS Health, which now includes the insurers Aetna and Cigna.
An additional conflict of interest lies with the new Medicare negotiations of prescription drug costs. Oz holds stock in several large pharmaceutical companies.
Some members of Congress have expressed concerns over a 2020 op-ed in which Oz advocated to eliminate traditional Medicare and replace it with the private Medicare Advantage plans he profits from.
While Dr. Oz has said he would stop promoting wellness products if he’s confirmed, according to ABC News, many are waiting to see if he will divest from the companies that he would be regulating through CMS.
Landmark victory: WEP/GPO repealed!
It’s an astonishing accomplishment, and AFSCME retirees helped make it happen: After 40 years of public employees seeing their earned Social Security benefits cut or eliminated, Congress passed and President Biden signed the Social Security Fairness Act.
This bipartisan legislation repeals the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), two provisions of Social Security law that deprived millions of public service retirees of the Social Security benefits they have earned.
Action by Chapter 31 members and retirees across the nation made a difference that millions of public service retirees will feel in coming years.
AFSCME Retirees made thousands of phone calls and sent more than 5,000 letters to legislators to build support for the bill. It took all of us, but we kept our collective voice loud and got the Social Security Fairness Act passed in the House and the Senate with bipartisan support.
It wasn’t easy. Various bills to repeal GPO and WEP were introduced in Congress over the years. Anti-retiree politicians in the Senate tried to kill this one until the last minute, but we won.
This is historic progress. Soon, all public service retirees and their spouses will begin to receive the full Social Security benefits they’ve earned.