Dr. Oz Celebrated Bastille Day By Going Full Marie Antoinette

(Don't) let them eat cake.

Jul 15, 2025

Approximately 10 million Americans are about to lose their Medicaid coverage thanks to Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, a prospect made even more frightening this week as a federal judge has just announced that medical debt will once again be included in one’s credit report. This means that a whole lot of people’s entire lives are about to be well and truly fucked.

On Monday, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is now the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services because we are now all in hell, went on “Fox & Friends” to “dispel Democrat myths” (that are actually facts!) about the Medicaid cuts and how harmful they will be. The crux of his argument was that only people who were nefariously gaming the system — able-bodied people who just wanted to watch “6.1 hours of television” a day instead of work, undocumented immigrants, trans people who require gender-affirming care, etc. — are on Medicaid and that everyone who actually deserves it will have it and be able to keep up with all of the paperwork that will soon be involved.

He also had some advice for those on it and about to lose it.

"We'll be there for you when you need help with Medicare and Medicaid, but you've got to stay healthy as well. Be vital. Do the most that you can do to really live up to the potential, the God-given potential, to live a full and healthy life. You know, don't eat carrot cake. Eat real food," he said, after having just given Stuart Varney a carrot cake.

Carrot cake is okay for rich people, we guess.

Oz shared that Trump wants to “love and cherish” Medicaid, but that when Medicaid was first established, no one ever dreamed that able-bodied people who could work would use it, which is a straight-up lie. Medicaid and Medicare were established in 1965 and were intended as a step towards universal healthcare. In fact, they were based on Harry S. Truman’s plans for a universal healthcare system, which he first proposed in 1945.

Indeed, Americans elected five presidents in a row — FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ and Nixon — who were in favor of national healthcare in some form or another. So, no, this would not have been a foreign concept, but actually a goal.

In order to bolster this theory that it was only ever intentioned for those on the margins of society, Oz shared a quote from LBJ’s vice president Hubert Humphrey that he read on the wall of the building he now works in: “It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

Except that was not remotely what Humphrey believed, which is why we should never get our history lessons from statues and inspirational quotes painted on a wall. Should Oz care to delve deeper into that he might do well to read Humphrey’s 1949 New York Times op-ed, titled The Case for National Health Insurance; Senator Humphrey holds private medical care and voluntary plans too costly for most people.

Oz also played the “Oh, Democrats don’t think Americans are competent enough to fill out paperwork! They think you’re stupid!” card, which should probably work quite well on the Fox News audience. But competence isn’t the problem, here.

One pretty big problem is the fact that adding work requirements will likely cost more money than it will “save.” Admin isn’t free! You have to pay people to ensure that recipients have filled out all of their paperwork, are working, are doing everything else required of them. Estimates range from under $10 million to over $270 million per state. Additionally, this means that you will have a lot of uninsured people out there, whom hospitals are still legally required to treat should they be taken there in an emergency. This, too, costs more money than just covering them with Medicaid — particularly if they are able-bodied adults who do not require lots of medical care.

Oz mentioned that two states had already implemented such requirements, but there’s only actually one: Georgia, whose “Pathways” program mandated work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps. He didn’t offer any additional information about that, probably because it has cost taxpayers significantly more per recipient than simply not implementing work requirements would have. By the end of 2024, the program had cost taxpayers $86 million, three-quarters of which was spent on consultants. This is probably because only about three percent of the 250,000 Georgians eligible for the program have actually enrolled.

Another issue is that, no matter how how “competent” people are, anything you throw in between them and Medicaid (or anything) will act as a deterrent. It’s just human nature. Although even the most “competent” Americans can’t do much about a website as glitchy as the one in Georgia that, as of February, had a 16,000 application backlog.

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Diet is an important factor when it comes to health, but it is not the be-all-end-all. Unless the carrot cake one wishes to eat is in the middle of the road, it’s probably going to have little to no effect on whether or not people get hit by a car. People still need healthcare and are deserving of healthcare regardless of whether or not they make bad or unhealthy choices, which almost all of us do. In fact, if one were to have listened to Dr. Oz’s scammy-ass advice and taken green coffee bean supplements in order to lose weight, not only would they not have actually lost any weight, but they could have worsened glaucoma and anxiety issues and potentially damaged their hearts.

Listening to Dr. Oz on health issues was a bad idea then, and it is a bad idea now. Work requirements for Medicaid are a luxury we cannot afford. We already spend a ridiculous amount of money on healthcare in this country, simply for the glorious privilege of private health insurance, and this — while it might make some people feel good — is just going to make it worse.

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