Jan 24, 2026 · 1h 5m · allin
Dr. Mehmet Oz on Fixing American Healthcare + Fraud | Live from Davos
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the All-In Podcast live from Davos, hosts Jason Calacanis and David Sacks interview CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz about transforming American healthcare through aggressive fraud reduction, AI-driven operational efficiency, and major drug pricing negotiations like the Trump Rx GLP-1 initiative.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 42.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 4.2 Guest teaching 4.5 Guest disagreement 1.8 The hosts pushing back 1.5
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:02:42 Dismissing academic faculty lounge pontification
Oz sharply dismisses defenders of drug enablement policies, labeling their arguments as ivory-tower faculty lounge pontification completely detached from real-world suffering.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 44:52 Comparing audit vetoes to enabling fraudSacks forcefully rejects the justification for vetoing state spending audits, arguing that blocking audits is intentionally done to allow fraud to persist.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 39:38 Exposing 100% hospice survival rate fraudOz educates the hosts on the bizarre mechanics of California healthcare fraud, revealing that fraudulent hospice facilities report a 100% patient survival rate because no terminally ill patients are actually admitted.
The host holds their own ▶ 46:32 Twitter card cancellation auditing lessonCalacanis draws directly from his hands-on experience restructuring Twitter with Elon Musk, demonstrating how cutting off corporate payment cards forces fraudulent and unused software vendors to expose themselves.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transitioning to Public Service and the Business of Change | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Calacanis asks Oz why he transitioned from TV and surgery into public service. Oz explains his focus on actionable change, while the hosts draw parallels to Trump's rapid operational style. | |
| Governing Mechanisms and Using Convening Power for Drug Pricing | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Oz breaks down three mechanisms of government action: statutory laws, administrative rulemaking, and convening power. The hosts listen as Oz explains how administrative rules face constant lawfare. | |
| Most Favored Nation Pricing and Negotiating with Pharma | 3 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Calacanis calculates GDP spending percentages for pharmaceuticals. Oz explains using leverage against pharma companies without destroying their core innovation incentives. | |
| Reframing Healthcare as an Investment and Healthspan Economics | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Oz reframes healthcare from a pure expense to an economic investment that boosts workforce participation, while Sacks notes cross-border patient travel patterns from Canada. | |
| Transforming Primary Care and General Practice Through AI | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Calacanis cites university studies showing LLMs outperforming general practitioners in bedside manner and diagnostic accuracy, prompting Oz to discuss GP shortages and debt burdens. | |
| AI Automation, Patient Connection, and Personal Sleep Banter | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Sacks and Calacanis showcase deep familiarity with consumer health tech tools, detailing how LLMs parse unstructured blood panel data far faster than traditional visits. | |
| Medicaid Vulnerabilities, Data Interoperability, and Patient Empowerment | 3 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Oz surprises the hosts with stats showing Medicare wellness exam attendance sits below 50% and explains how AI can democratize access for Medicaid patients who skip appointments. | |
| White House Data Pledge and AI as Data Translator | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Sacks demonstrates strong domain understanding of medical record lock-in and explains how LLMs serve as an automated translation layer across proprietary formats. | |
| Expanding AI Therapy and Deploying the $50B Rural Health Fund | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Sacks highlights state-level regulatory bans on AI therapy, prompting Oz to outline how the $50B Rural Health Fund addresses severe mental health provider shortages in remote regions. | |
| Technological Innovations in Rural Healthcare and IT Modernization | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Calacanis analyzes regulatory moats around healthcare startups while Oz describes micro-clinics, ultrasound robotics, and drone drug delivery in underserved areas. | |
| CMS Infrastructure Overhaul and Eliminating Government IT Waste | 3 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Oz stuns the hosts by revealing CMS operated with only 9 software engineers for over 6,500 employees and recently terminated a $200M wasteful IT contract. | |
| Trump Rx Announcement and Democratizing Access to GLP-1s | 3 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Oz details the upcoming Trump Rx initiative to slash GLP-1 weight loss drug costs down to $200 cash pay and $0 for Medicaid recipients. | |
| Long-Term Financial Return and Next-Generation Therapeutic Formats | 3 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Oz details the 9-year rural life expectancy deficit and how new oral GLP-1 formats and multi-receptor agonists like Retatrutide will reshape preventative medicine. | |
| Systemic Causes of Healthcare Fraud and Administrative Oversight Gaps | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 | Oz connects voter registration mandates in welfare offices to government assistance programs while Sacks analyzes how government payment alters consumer value incentives. | |
| Highlighting Regional Healthcare Fraud Operations | 3 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Oz delivers shocking fraud details, including a 100% survival rate at fake California hospice centers and 20x DME supplier density in South Florida. | |
| Exposing Healthcare Fraud and Political Resistance to Audits | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Sacks and Calacanis aggressively criticize state political leaders for vetoing budget audits, comparing the prohibition of audits to banning voter ID. | |
| Twitter's Credit Card Audit: Uncovering Unused Subscriptions | 7 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Calacanis shares a detailed case study from restructuring Twitter where cancelling corporate credit cards uncovered massive uninstalled software billing fraud. | |
| Whistleblowers, Institutional Cover-Ups, and Systemic Reform | 6 | 5 | 3 | 2 | Oz reveals a $1.5B audit clawback against California for improper Medi-Cal billing, while Sacks analyzes political union dynamics behind state coverage expansions. | |
| Reforming Addiction, Homelessness Incentives, and Drug Enforcement | 6 | 5 | 3 | 3 | Calacanis pushes back on soft framing of urban addiction while Oz dismisses academic enablement arguments as faculty lounge pontification. | |
| Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Healthcare Administration | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Sacks concludes the interview by praising Dr. Oz's domain knowledge and dedication to implementing AI across CMS administration. |
Statements from this episode (45)
Sacks: Donald Trump attempts to resolve meeting problems immediately via phone
“You'll be in a meeting with the president in the Oval Office, and you'll tell him about a problem. His first instinct is to pick up the phone and call and fix it right then and there.”
Dr. Oz claims blue cities blocked federal anti-fraud rule out of political opposition
“We had a rule that would reduce fraud, but the blue cities didn't like it because it was coming from someone they didn't like, the president, so they enjoined it, and that's now caught up in court.”
Dr. Oz: US spends 0.8% of GDP on pharmaceutical products
“We pay, in the United States.8% of our GDP towards pharmaceutical products.”
Dr. Oz: UK agrees to US drug pricing terms
“We've just gotten the British to say yes, and other countries are talking to us about the fact that they pay .3%.”
Dr. Oz: European cancer survival lags U.S. due to drug delays
“If you get cancer, more advanced cancers in Europe, your survival rate's way below the US. And if you don't get access to the drugs, which they don't for several years on average that we get in the US, yes, you can get it for cheaper, but your people are payin…”
Dr. Oz: Extending American work life by one year adds $3T to economy
“If you can get the average American to work one year longer, that is worth three trillion dollars to the US economy.”
Dr. Oz: Socialized medicine causes six-month to year-long wait times
“So you can get the health care, like you do in socialized medicine countries, you just have to wait six months or a year or longer, or you don't get the care at all.”
Dr. Oz: Large language models outperform doctors on medical board exams
“The large language models do better on board exams. So, they take general knowledge. They're better than a doctor. They're more patient than a doctor.”
Dr. Oz: U.S. needs two to three times more general practitioners to match Europe
“There are not enough GPs in America. We probably need two to three times more just to keep up with Europe.”
Dr. Oz claims 50% of human high cognitive function reads facial expressions
“50% of our cortex, of our high cognitive function, 50% of it is to read your face.”
Dr. Oz predicts 20% of Americans will adopt self-directed healthcare
“If 20% of Americans do what you're saying, and they will, it would make all of medicine function better.”
Dr. Oz: Medicaid patients are twice as likely to cancel appointments as Medicare patients
“The chance of a Medicaid patient who doesn't pay for their health care because they don't have the means to do it, the chance of them canceling their doctor's appointment is twice that of a Medicare patient.”
Dr. Oz: Fewer than 50% of Medicare patients take free annual wellness exams
“It's less than 50%. Less than 50%. But most people don't do it.”
Dr. Oz: 600 companies pledge commitment to healthcare data interoperability
“600 companies have signed a pledge agreeing to interoperability, data, transparency, and to build these tools for the American people to be able to use them.”
Dr. Oz: Patients forget half of doctor instructions before leaving the office
“Because 50% of what a doctor tells the patient is forgotten before the patient leaves the office.”
Sacks: AI eliminates the need for structured healthcare APIs
“So you don't need like a perfect API anymore. You just get the unstructured data, dump it in, and now it just works.”
Dr. Oz: 60 million rural Americans lack mental health access
“Sixty million Americans living in rural America don't have access to mental health services.”
Dr. Oz: CMS distributes $50B for largest rural healthcare investment
“Fifty billion dollars, the largest investment ever made in rural healthcare through our agency, was given up by the end of the calendar year.”
Calacanis: Government sales cycles force VCs to invest direct-to-consumer
“The, Only investments we've ever made in those spaces are ones that go direct to consumer, because we know going through the government, there's just not enough runway for those companies to get to the other side.”
Dr. Oz: CMS had only 9 software engineers among 6,500 employees
“We had nine engineers when we came in and all of CMS, our COBOL based infrastructure built in the seventies, where we don't have engineers that you're talking about in the department, you had nine engineers out of what's the denominator of employees? 6500 empl…”
Dr. Oz: CMS fired $200M contractor that produced zero usable code
“There was a company that we fired that had billed us two hundred million dollars, not a single usable line of code”
Dr. Oz: Cheaper GLP-1s will return taxpayer money within two years
“At that price, we will, within two years, return money to the American taxpayer.”
Dr. Oz: Administration caps GLP-1 Medicare copays at $50, Medicaid free
“Every Medicare patient gets it for 50 dollar copay. Every Medicaid patient gets it for nothing.”
Oz: Life expectancy in rural vulnerable populations is nine years shorter
“The life expectancy in rural America, I'll go back to them, in vulnerable populations, nine years shorter than yours in the same country.”
Dr. Oz: Next-generation metabolic drugs will curb addiction better than GLP-1s
“GLP-I ones, they're just the tip of the iceberg. There are more and more sophisticated ways for us to be able to address not just appetite, but addiction, addictive behavior drops at GLP-I ones. So new, the newer drugs are going to be even more effective at th…”
Dr. Oz: Don't fix legacy infrastructure if the future renders it obsolete
“Don't bother fixing today's broken pipes if the world you're building doesn't have pipes.”
Dr. Oz: Administration is pushing GLP-1 drugmakers to onshore manufacturing
“We're also getting these companies to unshore their production facility.”
Dr. Oz: Federal law requires voter registration options with welfare programs
“It is by federal law, mandated that if you give a patient a welfare program, SNAP, Medicaid, you must also give them the ability to sign up to vote.”
Dr. Oz: South Florida has 20x more DME providers than McDonald's
“There's actually 20 times more in South Florida than McDonald's.”
Dr. Oz: California hospice providers increased sevenfold in under seven years
“We have seven times more hospice in California. Hospice is for people at the end of their life. Seven times more hospice than was there five, six, seven years ago.”
Dr. Oz: Fraudulent California hospice centers report a 100% survival rate
“The survival rate for most of these hospice centers is a hundred percent.”
Oz: CMS executed a $15 billion healthcare fraud bust earlier this year
“We had a big fifteen billion dollar bust on these guys earlier in the year.”
Oz: CMS will freeze new provider enrollments for fraud-prone services
“I'm gonna put a moratorium on some of these services. We're not gonna let new people sign up.”
Dr. Oz: CMS will withhold Medicaid funds from states failing fraud enforcement
“We're gonna actively and aggressively stop paying Medicaid if we can prove that states are not obliging their fiduciary responsibility to the American people.”
Sacks: California's $350B budget has doubled over the last decade
“California, the budget's three hundred fifty billion dollars, by far the biggest. It has doubled in the last decade.”
Dr. Oz estimates $3.5 billion in Los Angeles hospice healthcare fraud
“Just LA County alone, just in hospice and home health care, we believe it's about three and a half billion dollars.”
Dr. Oz says LA accounts for ~10% of US home healthcare spending
“There's probably 10% of all home health care expense in America is in LA.”
Calacanis: Twitter was paying for software subscriptions that were never used
“And, so we sit there and we're like, yeah, cancel the cards. Immediately, I get three back channels from software companies who are like, hey I know you're helping Elon. I saw a story in the New York Times. Our bill stopped getting paid. Can we come in? And I'…”
Sacks: Empty Minnesota daycare centers received millions in public funding
“All it took was a YouTuber with a video camera to actually show up at the Minnesota daycare centers that were receiving millions of dollars. Yeah, the Leering Center. They're all empty. Dozens of them. Each one's receiving millions of dollars.”
Dr. Oz: Medicare and Medicaid can be breached with just a beneficiary number
“All you need to penetrate Medicare and Medicaid is a beneficiary number. They can buy those, and you're off to the races.”
Dr. Oz: California undocumented immigrants receive coverage unavailable under Medicare
“If you're on Medicare, you don't get free dental, you don't get free vision. You do if you're an illegal immigrant in California.”
Dr. Oz: Audit reveals California improperly billed $1.5B for undocumented immigrant healthcare
“We've audited him now. This data's coming out this week. We have now found over one and a half billion dollars of money spent wrongly. We've audited it. They're not even arguing. One and a half billion dollars from that California charged the federal governmen…”