The following is the transcript of an interview with Dr. Mehmet Oz, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Aug. 3, 2025.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Change is coming for the country’s Medicaid system as part of the enactment of the Big, Beautiful Bill. To help us understand what’s ahead, we turn now to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz. Good morning. Welcome to Face The Nation.
DR. MEHMET OZ: Thank you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You’ve got a lot of work ahead. I want to start on drug costs. The president put this 25% tariff on India, big drug producer. The President’s trade deal with the EU puts a 15 percent tariff on imported medicines from Europe. How do you stop the drug makers from passing along those costs to people on Medicare and Medicaid?
DR. MEHMET OZ: Well, the president’s letter on Thursday for most favored nation pricing is a good example of that, and he’s been working on this tirelessly since the first administration. And just to put this in context for many of the viewers, about two thirds of bankruptcies in America are caused by health care expenses. About a third of people when they go to the pharmacy, they leave empty handed. They can’t afford the medication. So the President has said, Enough global freeloading. We’ve been covering much of the development costs for new drugs to cure cancer, deal with lots of other illnesses that are life threatening. It is in time for the American public to understand that we should not be paying three times more for the exact same medication in the same box, made in the same factories. The president’s saying, equalize it out. Let’s use a model that’s worked, for example, for external threats, that’s what NATO did. Everyone has to pay a little more. We’ll pay extra too, but we won’t pay a lot more than everybody else, so they actually have to raise their contributions, in this case, to an internal threat, which is illness. We’ll pay a little less than America that way more Americans can afford these medications, and it’s a fair system for the entire globe.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So this was declared in these letters that were sent out to 17 pharmaceutical companies this past week, and it calls for extending that to Medicaid drug prices. Is that intended to offset what will be, you know, cuts to Medicaid? And do you know, you know, if the companies are actually going to follow through on this, like, how do you actually strong arm them into doing it?
DR. OZ: Well just get the numbers correct. We’re putting 200 billion more dollars into Medicaid. So we’re actually investing—
MARGARET BRENNAN: —by the time when costs are going up, so.
DR. OZ: Costs are going up, but there’s been a 50 percent increase in the cost of Medicaid over the last five years. So I’m trying to save this beautiful program, this noble effort, to help folks giving them a hand up. And as you probably gather, if…
Read More: Transcript: Dr. Mehmet Oz on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Aug.
