Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, suggested Wednesday that President Donald Trump has a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act — but provided no specifics about the proposal.
“I fully believe the president has a plan,” Oz told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. “We’ve been talking about it quite a bit. There’s all kinds of ideas.”
“The issue, Kristen, is which specific parts of the plan do you prioritize, which are the ones you want to focus on,” he added.
When pressed for specifics about Trump’s plan, Oz said, “The plans that were originally offered during the One Big Beautiful Bill fell out, which is fine.”
Trump has repeatedly vowed to repeal and replace the ACA, also known as Obamacare, both during his first term and again on the 2024 campaign trail — but his current administration has yet to provide details about what his new plan would like like or how it would affect people who rely on the law for coverage.
More than 24 million people got coverage through the ACA in 2025, according to government data.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Oz’s remarks.
Oz’s comments come as ACA open enrollment begins Nov. 1, with experts warning that next year’s premium hikes will be the largest since the health care law took effect.
Enhanced subsidies — first approved under the 2021 American Rescue Plan and later extended through 2025 under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — are set to expire at the end of the year.
Those subsidies are at the heart of a political standoff in Washington, with Democrats saying they won’t provide the votes to reopen the government until they’re extended.
According to an analysis from the health policy research group KFF, without the subsidies, average out-of-pocket premium payments are expected to double, from $888 a year to $1,904. The Congressional Budget Office projects that nearly 4 million will drop their coverage if the subsidies aren’t extended. A recent poll from KFF found that most of Trump’s supporters back keeping the tax credits.
Some people who’ve received notices about next year’s premium hikes say they’re planning to drop their coverage and go uninsured.
On Wednesday, Oz accused Democrats of “holding the entire country hostage” by refusing to vote to reopen the government until subsidies under the ACA are extended.
He said the ACA “has been sick from the moment it was created” and it “got a lot sicker during Covid.”
“There were changes made, like these enhanced subsidies you’re asking about, they were added on top of the already robust subsidies that exist,” he said. (Standard subsidies for people with very low incomes that were enacted when the ACA was signed into law are expected to continue — although premiums are expected to rise for people who get those as well.)
Oz said the real issue is “how do we actually restructure the system so it works.”
“To do that you need smart people like the kinds of folks we have in this beautiful building I’m speaking to you from, which houses HHS and the agency I run, Medicare and Medicaid — but they’re not here now, they’re furloughed, they’re at home,” he said.
