Politics
Nation's Drug Costs Now Managed By Man Who Once Recommended Detox Tea
By Mor Michael, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Trump administration announced this week that it is pursuing additional drug pricing agreements with major pharmaceutical companies, with the effort led by Mehmet Oz, the former television personality who spent roughly fifteen years informing afternoon audiences that the cure for metabolic dysfunction was, variously, green coffee bean extract, African mango seed, and something called the "cortisol connection."
Oz, now administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, appeared on Bloomberg Television to confirm the deals are in progress. He spoke with the calm authority of a man who has been trusted with important things before, which is technically true if you count the emotional wellbeing of housewives who believed acai berries would change their lives by March.
The specific companies involved have not been named. The specific terms have not been disclosed. The specific credentials that made Oz the right person to conduct billion-dollar pharmaceutical negotiations have also not been released, though his official biography does note that he attended Harvard and Penn, which is the kind of sentence that stops working as a defense around the time you hold up a bottle of supplements and call it "nature's miracle."
"We are in very productive conversations," Oz told Bloomberg. "The deals we've already made have shown what's possible. There is more coming." He then presumably adjusted his tie and did not mention that the last time he was in productive conversations with pharmaceutical-adjacent companies, he was helping sell their advertising slots between segments about emotional eating.
PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry's trade group, declined to characterize the negotiations but issued a statement praising the administration's "collaborative approach to ensuring patient access." This is the industry's way of saying the number on the table is not as bad as they feared, which is also what contestants on The Dr. Oz Show used to say before the segment ended and they went home the same size.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has spent forty years being loudly correct about drug prices in a way that has produced almost no drug price reductions, did not comment specifically on Oz's role. His office released a statement about pharmaceutical greed, which it has been releasing in various formats since approximately 1987.
What is actually happening, stripped of the television lighting: the Trump administration began the year by inheriting an existing Medicare drug price negotiation framework, accelerated some of it, and is now announcing progress through the person whose most recent relevant experience is having told eleven million daily viewers that their body was a temple that could be unlocked with a fourteen-day cleanse.
Pharmaceutical executives, for their part, are reportedly treating the negotiations as they would treat any serious government process, which means they have brought lawyers, economists, and people whose entire job is to make the number smaller. Oz has brought whatever it is Oz brings.
Patient advocacy groups are cautiously supportive of lower prices, vigorously concerned about the details, and quietly unsure whether to feel better or worse about the fact that the man closing these deals once told a live studio audience that lemon water "resets the digestive fire."
The digestive fire, at last report, was unavailable for comment on the state of Medicare negotiations.
More deals are coming, Oz said. He seemed confident. He has always seemed confident. That has never been the issue.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-09/trump-administration-working-on-more-drug-pricing-deals-oz-says