Mehmet Oz
Net Worth: ~ $200 Million (As of November 30, 2024)
- Mehmet Oz is an advocate of Medicare Advantage. In his 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race, he pushed a “Medicare Advantage for All” Plan. This plan was criticized for moving seniors to private plans which would raise premiums and deny more claims: “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.”
- Oz has been criticized for promoting medical scams, shady health companies, and pseudoscience on his show:
- He has been alleged to have made $50 million over a five year period for promoting Usana Health Sciences: “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.[…] the plaintiff in a trademark infringement case against Usana claimed the supplement company paid more than $50 million in the previous five years for promotion on the Dr. Oz show.” Usana has been the subject of federal investigation, lawsuits, and has been called a multi-level marketing scheme.
- Oz was criticized by senators in 2014 for promoting weight-loss scams. Oz promoted “Pure Green Coffee beans, which claims to help users lose 20 pounds in four weeks and 16 percent of body fat in three months.” Pure Green’s producers, NPB Advertising, were sued by the FTC. On March 6, 2025, the agency sent back $905,000 in refunds to consumers who bought the product while calling it “a sham weight loss product marketed using false health claims, bogus testimonials, and fake news websites by NPB Advertising.”
- Dr. Oz publicly promoted hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19. Reporting from 2022 found that he owned shares in companies that supply the drug, such as Thermo Fisher Scientific and McKesson Corporation. The WHO does not recommend Hydroxychloroquine for treating or preventing COVID-19.
- Dr. Oz has a number of controversial political stances. He “positioned himself as one of the chief promoters” of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 during the pandemic. He opposed the involvement of the federal government in protecting abortion rights, saying “states can decide for themselves.” On his show, he once claimed that “language centers in the female brain are bigger, which helps explain a woman’s ‘Gift of Gab.’” He once falsely claimed that “80 to 85 percent of kids who say they are transgender will naturally, if they’re not influenced, go back to their biological gender.”
- Oz was endorsed by Trump when he ran for a Pennsylvania Senate seat against John Fetterman in 2022. He lost the election. Oz faced skepticism that he had moved to Pennsylvania only to run for the Senate seat: “Republicans are questioning whether, and for how long, he has been a resident of Pennsylvania, a famously parochial state. According to his campaign, Oz has lived in Pennsylvania since December 2020, renting a home in Bryn Athyn owned by his wife’s family. […] Oz was previously a decadeslong resident of New Jersey, where he voted in October 2020. He registered to vote in Pennsylvania soon after.” During his campaign, Oz called “himself a ‘conservative’” while “also pledging to put ‘America first,’ a slogan Trump championed.”
- In 2018, Dr. Oz was appointed by Trump to serve on the Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition. Biden asked him to resign in 2022, since he was running a Senate campaign while still sitting on the council: “A White House official said last week both Oz and Walker were asked to resign because it is against the administration’s policy to have federal candidates sit on presidential councils.”
For more information, see the Revolving Door Project’s Billionaires in Trump World tracker.