Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), during a confirmation hearing on Friday pledged to address the needs of chronically ill patients with the twin goals of reducing costs and improving outcomes.

Oz rose to fame in the early 2000s as a talk show host and a frequent guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In 2022, he ran for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania as a Republican, losing to Democrat John Fetterman. Before Oz can serve as CMS administrator, his nomination must be confirmed by the Senate. If confirmed, he would succeed Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.

For close to three hours, members of the Senate Finance Committee peppered Oz with questions about issues facing CMS, including rural health, potential Medicaid cuts, prescription drug pricing, Medicare Advantage marketing practices, prior authorizations and regional disparities in Medicare payments, among others.

Though hospice and home-based care were not discussed during the hearing, Oz did point to chronic illness as a significant driver of health care expenditures and poor patient outcomes.

“The Medicare trust fund will be insolvent within a decade. That’s 2.9% taken out of your paycheck. Medicaid is the number one expense item in most states, consuming 30% of those state budgets, and that’s crowding out services like schools and public safety that many of you spend your career trying to develop,” Oz said during the hearing. “Health care cost-per-person in this country is twice that of other developed nations … Why is it costing us so much? Because of chronic disease. … They drive three quarters of the $1.7 trillion that CMS spends a year to support Americans’ health.”

If confirmed, Oz would report to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the newly appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services. He would oversee both the Medicare and Medicaid programs, including the hospice benefit.

Oz previously served as the director of the Cardiovascular Institute at New York Presbyterian Hospital and vice-chairman and professor of surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 2018, he was named Professor Emeritus of Surgery. He in the past has come forward as a strong proponent of Medicare Advantage and further privatization of Medicare.

Hospices and home health organizations could have a big role to play in the fight against chronic disease and the associated costs, according to Scott Levy, chief government affairs officer for the National Alliance for Care at Home.

“One of the themes that continued to come up in the hearing was the impact of chronic disease and the effects it has on our community, the [Medicare] trust fund, the beneficiaries, and trying to get out in front of that,” Levy told Hospice News. “Home-based care has a huge role in the larger chronic care discussion.”

During the hearing, OZ put forth three goals that he said he would pursue if confirmed — “empowering beneficiaries” with better tools and more transparency so they can better navigate the health care system, incentivizing health care providers to optimize care and “modernizing tools” to reduce fraud, waste and abuse.

The CMS nominee was also vocal in his support for telehealth.

“Congress has a responsibility to extend telehealth widely throughout the nation, and as it was during COVID …” Oz said. “It is a major focus of mine, and if confirmed, it’s one of the areas I think we’ll be able to make major inroads, because there are no opponents to this.”