Dr. Oz Uses Stigma to Sell Medicaid Work Requirements That Will Strip Coverage From Millions

Dr. Oz’s Fox Business appearance was not a rhetorical stumble; it was a deliberate effort to rebrand a policy that has already been enacted. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s August 2025 estimate, the 2025 reconciliation law’s cuts to Medicaid, CHIP, Marketplace, and Medicare together will increase the number of uninsured by 1.3 million. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities further projects that the harsh work requirements alone will put 9.9 million to 14.9 million people at risk of losing coverage. Oz’s narrative — that work requirements promote workforce participation — is contradicted by every real-world test. In Arkansas’s 2018–19 experiment, more than 18,000 people lost coverage over just seven months, with zero measurable effect on employment. A KFF factsheet and multiple studies confirm this result, and the policy was halted only by a federal court order in March 2019. No state has voluntarily sustained such requirements.

The administration is using stigma to sell a policy that will rip coverage from people who are already working, too ill to work, or caring for family members. The real objective is not fiscal responsibility but a reduction in the social safety net to fund tax cuts, using shame to mask the cruelty. The alternative is simple: eliminate the reporting burden, invest in the care infrastructure that enables work, and ensure Medicaid remains a guaranteed right — not a political loyalty test. As the JAMA microsimulation model shows, these cuts will also lead to higher mortality, thousands of preventable hospitalizations, and rural economic harm. The correct response is to reverse the work requirement provisions and restore the expansion incentive eliminated in the law.