Trump Medicare nominee Dr Oz may have underpaid taxes, Senate Democrats say

WASHINGTON – Dr Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician nominated by President Donald Trump to oversee the government’s Medicare and Medicaid health plans, appears to have underpaid his own Medicare taxes by more than US$400,000 (S$534,000), Democratic staffers on a US Senate committee said in a memo reviewed by Reuters on March 13.

Dr Oz is due to appear on March 14 before the Senate Finance Committee, which will decide whether to advance his nomination as head of the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Both Dr Oz’s spokesman and Mr Mike Crapo, the Republican head of the Senate Finance Committee, said the nominee had resolved any financial ethics issues ahead of the congressional hearing.

In the memo, Democratic staffers said Dr Oz may have failed to pay US$403,739 in Medicare taxes on more than US$10 million of income from his media company from 2021 to 2023.

The staffers said such payments would stem from requirements for self-employed people, and said they disputed Dr Oz’s claim that he qualified for an exemption.

The memo also estimated that he may have failed to pay US$36,928 in Social Security for the same period.

Dr Oz spokesman Christopher Krepich said an extensive review by the Office of Government Ethics found that Dr Oz complied with the law, and had shared that finding with the Senate Finance Committee. Spokespersons for the Office of Government Ethics were not immediately available for comment.

“Dr Oz followed the law and provided significant amounts of documentation to substantiate his tax return positions as part of the committee’s rigorous vetting process,” Finance Committee Chairman Crapo said in a statement.

The Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services, with annual spending of US$2.6 trillion, oversees health insurance for more than half of all Americans. Medicare is the federal health insurance programme for people aged 65 or older or who have disabilities, and Medicaid covers low-income people.

Dr Oz, 64, gained national prominence as a cardiothoracic surgeon and television personality, hosting The Dr Oz Show for more than a decade, where he dispensed medical advice and, at times, controversial health recommendations.

Republican lawmakers control the Senate and have been largely supportive of him. Democrats on the committee were expected to focus their questioning on his potential business conflicts of interest during the hearing.

“Dr Oz is once again demonstrating that he cannot be trusted to protect Medicare and Medicaid for millions of people – and Senate Republicans will be held accountable if they support this healthcare-cutting, tax-dodging nominee,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a committee member, said in a statement.

Republicans had backed nearly all of Mr Trump’s nominees until March 13, when the White House withdrew the nomination of former Republican congressman and vaccine critic Dave Weldon as director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. REUTERS