Dr. Mehmet Oz said that Americans will continue to receive Medicaid and Medicare as long as they live up to their “god given potential,” and stay away from the carrot cake.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator brought Fox Business’ Stuart Varney a “MAHA Medi-cake” for Medicaid’s 60th anniversary Monday, but warned him not to eat it.
“I was jokingly calling this the MAHA Medi-cake, but of course I couldn’t find a healthy cake so I bought the closest thing, a carrot cake,” Oz told the Varney & Co. host.
“Happy 60th Birthday Medicare” was written on the cake in red frosting with frosted carrots circling it.
“We’ll just leave it right there, we’ll take care of it,” Varney quipped.
“I’m sure you will,” Oz said.
During their interview, Varney addressed the elephant—or, rather, the carrot cake—in the room, asking Oz about the 11 million people projected to lose their Medicaid coverage due to President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
Oz said that he didn’t “believe that number is correct,” claiming that under Trump, people at Medicare and Medicaid now feel “that they’re unleashed, that they’re able to go out there and do the things that they always believed they could” to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA).
Varney went on to ask Oz: “Back in the day, [Medicaid] was nothing like this, was it?”
Oz replied that when Medicaid and Medicare were designed, they were “effective for people who truly needed help,” acting as the “safety net of the nation.”
“It was a promise to the American people to take care of you. If you’re having problems financially, or if you’re having an issue because you’re older and needed health care,” he said. “And it changed the country in a good way for many reasons.”
“But we’re all in it together Stuart, which means we’ll be there for you, the American people, when you need help with Medicaid and Medicare, but you got to stay healthy as well,” he noted.
“Be vital, do the most you can do to really live up to the potential, you’re God-given potential, to live a full and healthy life. And you know,” Oz said, gesturing at the carrot cake between him and Varney. “Don’t eat carrot cake, eat real food.”
The CMS administrator added on Fox & Friends Monday that there has been a “complete perversion” of Medicaid’s mission over the past few years, as well as “a destruction of its core purpose that led to it being at risk of bankruptcy.”
He also doubled down on the work requirements for Medicaid, saying that the president wants to “love and cherish” Medicaid, repeating a statement Trump made in January regarding future spending cuts.
Despite intense GOP pushback, Oz has stood firmly by the Medicaid cuts outlined in Trump’s federal budget bill, claiming that enforcing work requirements would help combat “fraud, waste, and abuse.”
In early June Oz said that he had “confidence in the American people” to “go out there, do entry level jobs, get into the workforce, prove that you matter, get agency into your own life.”
“It’s a much more enjoyable experience if you’re going through life thinking that you control your destiny. And you’ll get better insurance at the same time,” he said.
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