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Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor nominated by President Trump to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, has been a relentless promoter of controversial private insurance plans for older Americans.
“I’d be signing up,” he told viewers, directing them to a call center in an episode that is still available on his YouTube channel.
What Dr. Oz did not tell the audience was that he made money from touting the plans, known as Medicare Advantage. The for-profit company operating the call center, TZ Insurance Solutions, paid to be featured.
Dr. Oz even became a licensed broker for TZ Insurance in almost every state, according to regulatory filings newly unearthed by The New York Times, with the idea that he could sell plans directly to viewers.
He may be one of America’s best-known daytime TV personalities, or “America’s doctor,” as Oprah Winfrey called him. But little is known about exactly how he monetized his fame over the years. All told, his business and family ventures are valued in the neighborhood of roughly $90 million to $335 million.
He has made tens of millions of dollars hawking dietary supplements on his show and on social media, often without any mention of his financial interest. He has been paid by medical device firms and health-related ventures, and his money was invested in a dizzying array of businesses.
Many of those companies would be affected by any decisions he would make in the government post and many already benefit from agency funding.
In an attempt to avoid conflicts, Dr. Oz disclosed on Wednesday in ethics filings that he would sell his interests in more than 70 companies and investment funds. Those include as much as $600,000 in stock in UnitedHealth Group, the giant conglomerate that is the nation’s largest provider of private Medicare plans; as much as $5 million in Inception Fertility Holdings, a privately held company that operates a chain of clinics; and as much as $100,000 in HCA Healthcare, the sprawling for-profit hospital chain.
In addition, he indicated that he would sell as much as $26 million invested in Amazon, which has a vast reach that now includes One Medical, a primary care venture for in-person and virtual patient needs; an online pharmacy; and the sale of health-related products and devices through its gargantuan retail platform.
Dr. Oz also pledged in the filings to resign from paid advisory positions and to sell holdings in a digital stethoscope company, a pharmaceutical research and technology firm and a cardiology practice.
Still, he has several limited liability companies — Oz Works and Oz Property Holdings among them — and the nature of their operations is not known. He has no plans to close them and the filings state that he would remain an official at some. In the ethics agreement, he pledged not to “participate personally and substantially in any particular matter in which I know that I have a financial interest” or seek a waiver.
For years Dr. Oz used his show to promote dietary supplements, often making unsubstantiated claims about their effectiveness. He described selenium supplements as the “holy grail of cancer prevention” and hailed green coffee extract as a “magic weight-loss cure.”
At a hearing in 2014, when senators confronted him with his exaggerated statements about weight-loss products, he responded, “My job on the show, I feel, is to be a cheerleader for the audience.”
Dr. Oz was often a paid cheerleader. In 2012, he became a spokesman for Usana Health Sciences, a supplement company in Utah.
Usana also was referred to as a trusted sponsorship partner on his TV show. The company’s products were featured prominently and consumers could buy them through his TV website, according to a regulatory filing. Dr. Oz was also deeply involved in the company, attending Usana corporate events to rally employees.
Usana said its relationship with the Dr. Oz show ended in 2022, the year the show went off air. A year later he struck up a relationship with iHerb, whose other big-name pitchman is Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight champion.
There is little public information about iHerb, which is privately held and says it is “a multi-billion-dollar eCommerce platform.”
In the last few years without his daytime show, Dr. Oz has relied heavily on his social media accounts — Instagram, TikTok, and X — where he pitched iHerb to millions of followers. He recommended supplements that he said would promote hair growth and smoother skin. Olive oil, which iHerb sells, “might be able to actually help with Alzheimer’s.”
In a letter, Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, urged federal regulators to examine Dr. Oz’s posts, saying he did not always make clear his financial ties to iHerb, and to investigate whether he violated government policy by making “undisclosed endorsements and product advertisements.”
After Mr. Trump picked him in November to lead the Medicare-Medicaid agency, Dr. Oz did not drop his enthusiasm for iHerb. Over Thanksgiving, he promoted the company’s supplements on Instagram as a way to reduce stress.
Under the private Medicare plans, customers are allowed to buy over-the-counter medicines and supplements through debit or prepaid cards, another potential conflict for Dr. Oz because of his history with iHerb and other supplement companies.
And he has not shied from making the most personal of appeals for these products. In social media posts, Dr. Oz is pictured with his mother, who has Alzheimer’s, and claimed that iHerb supplements he sent her were among the steps that had “probably slowed” the progression of her disease.
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