REVEALED: Why Mehmet Oz Suddenly Ran For Senate. Hint: He’s A Bigger Crook Than You Know

Mehmet Oz is not only a snake oil salesman, he’s an unscrupulous businessman. He literally steals money from people. He stole $2.00 from me. How did that happen, you ask? I’ll tell you.

Back around 2015 or so, I answered one of his ads for a skin care cream that was supposedly some new and miraculous formula. It was available for $5.98 and I could cancel at any time, bla de bla. So I ordered the product and decided after two days it was garbage and contacted his company to cancel. I was told I could not and go “read the website” and I said, “I’m reading the ad, published such and such place and those are the terms and conditions I’m going by.”

More static. Finally the conversation degenerated to where I threatened to go to the Los Angeles District Attorney and then, miraculously, a supervisor showed up, who immediately canceled my account. And the two dollars? You’re aware how a vendor will charge $1.00 just to see if the account works and then they refund it? Oz never did. Plus, he charged an EXTRA dollar, for another product I never ordered — which was touted as a “gift” with the skin cream — same deal, took the dollar, never refunded it. So he ended up with $7.98 on a $5.98 purchase, which is a tidy mark up.

This is the kind of schmuck that the man is, and the kind of con job operation he runs. Fast forward to a blockbuster article the New York Times published a few days ago, about how Medicare Advantage insurers bilked the government for billions of dollars. And who is a Medicare Advantage proponent? You guessed it. Mehmet Oz.

The Times is reporting how most large insurers in the Medicare Advantage health plan have been in court already for fraud. United Health Group is one of those companies. In fact, it is the leading provider in the Medicare Advantage field, owning 27.1 of the market. And guess who owns $550,000 worth of stock in United Health Group? Yes, Mehmet Oz.

And here’s another riddle: Guess who not only has a large stake in the leading provider in the Medicare Advantage field, but who also has a grand scheme of his own, which he calls Medicare Advantage for All? Right again. Mehmet Oz. Crooks and Liars:

By contrast, Oz bills his own health care plan as “Medicare Advantage for All.” Such a program could move seniors and most Americans into private insurance plans that have been raising premiums and denying roughly one in ten medical claims, according to a recent government report finding that the plans frequently refuse to cover services required by Medicare.

To pay for his privatization plan, Oz has proposed a 20 percent payroll tax, which would ultimately transfer money from workers to the Republican Party’s private insurance donors that have been reporting record profits while jacking up premiums.

In other words, Oz himself wants to increase taxes on lower- and middle-class Americans to fund his own version of a corporate-run, universal health care system — one that could come with high patient costs, continued barriers to care, and a windfall for the health insurance industry.

Oz wants to take over health care and become a billionaire, plain and simple. If you read the Times story, you will see what a total rip off Medicare Advantage is and how it has cost taxpayers out the kazoo, because of the rampant fraud. But this is what Oz wants more of, and in spades.

The government pays Medicare Advantage insurers a set amount for each person who enrolls, with higher rates for sicker patients. And the insurers, among the largest and most prosperous American companies, have developed elaborate systems to make their patients appear as sick as possible, often without providing additional treatment, according to the lawsuits.

As a result, a program devised to help lower health care spending has instead become substantially more costly than the traditional government program it was meant to improve.

Eight of the 10 biggest Medicare Advantage insurers — representing more than two-thirds of the market — have submitted inflated bills, according to the federal audits. And four of the five largest players — UnitedHealth, Humana, Elevance and Kaiser — have faced federal lawsuits alleging that efforts to overdiagnose their customers crossed the line into fraud.

Crossed the line into fraud. Wow. That is a pretty bright redline, or at least it used to be. I guess those days are gone.

The government now spends nearly as much on Medicare Advantage’s 29 million beneficiaries as on the Army and Navy combined. It’s enough money that even a small increase in the average patient’s bill adds up: The additional diagnoses led to $12 billion in overpayments in 2020, according to an estimate from the group that advises Medicare on payment policies — enough to cover hearing and vision care for every American over 65. […]

The increased privatization has come as Medicare’s finances have been strained by the aging of baby boomers. But for insurers that already dominate health care for workers, the program is strikingly lucrative: A study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a research group unaffiliated with the insurer Kaiser, found the companies typically earn twice as much gross profit from their Medicare Advantage plans as from other types of insurance.

It’s a freaking cash cow. Now you need to take six minutes and watch this video. The reason that this is important is because Oz, in his See Spot Run analysis of health care, articulates the Republican value system regarding the uninsured. He talks of how medical care is “given” to those who can’t afford it, driving up costs, naturally, for the good, hardworking Republicans, who simply give it all away to the rest of us no good, lazy bums. HA!

I can tell you from grim personal experience, in the course of my working life in corporate America, there were times I had jobs with no health insurance benefits. Or, I was between jobs. And no medical care was “given” to me. Ever. I either ponied up $200 cash for an office visit to a doctor or I did without.

I almost died in Brotman Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles, when I was taken by ambulance twice in one week due to medication issues and I was not admitted, as sick as I was. On both occasions, my vital signs were stabilized and I was put out in the street. That is how the uninsured are treated in America. If I had had insurance I would have been admitted the first time I showed up in the ER and not had to come back a second time and have a near death experience on the gurney, which is exactly what happened. (And believe me, they didn’t want to talk about that. Not at all. When I mentioned the tunnel of light I had been in, all that, the atmosphere in that ER got so cold you could have cut blocks of it and built an igloo.)

But listen to Oz’s fairy tale picture of things. Listen and learn, because this is the warped Republican perspective. In their view, the Have Nots are crippling the Haves, rather than the truth of the matter, the Haves use every excuse in the book to rip off the system and taxpayers of all stripes, colors, and economic levels and bank the profit, all the while portraying themselves as the victims.

And you want to know what is truly disgusting? Oz most likely could get a lot of support for his rip off health care plan from the Republicans. It would not surprise me one jot.

The man is a dangerous quack, but then you knew that.

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