Dr. Mehmet Oz, the daytime television host tapped by President Donald Trump to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, doesn’t understand how health insurance works.Speaking on Fox News Monday in front of the president’s desolate fairgrounds, Oz presented his proof that the Obamacare marketplace was plagued by fraud—and in the process revealed how little he actually knows about health insurance.Oz claimed that of 23 million people who were signed up for the Affordable Care Act—commonly known as Obamacare—40 percent of enrollees had never actually used their insurance.“It raises, again, the reality that there are many people who are signed up who are getting paid for, but don’t believe they have the insurance, don’t know they have insurance, don’t want the insurance,” Oz said.Dr Oz on ACA "fraud" -- "Of the people who signed up, 40% never use the insurance. Let me ask you, John, you have health insurance -- do you use it once a year? In Obamacare right now 40% of the people ostensibly signed up never use the insurance ... we have a lot of fake people… pic.twitter.com/UsN5fGbyP8— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 29, 2026Of course, that’s not really how health insurance coverage works: Just because you have it doesn’t mean you actually use it. The only “reality” that Oz’s statistics raised was that health care in this country is way too expensive.“Over 50% of insured Americans struggle to afford seeing a doctor, and 1 in 4 insured Americans skip medical treatments because of out-of-pocket costs,” Melanie D’Arrigo, director of the Campaign for New York Health, wrote on X. “The actual fraud is Americans being price gouged on healthcare.”Many Americans on Obamacare marketplace plans struggle to pay their deductibles, or out-of-pocket costs, which have surged to record highs in 2026 and increase by more than $1,000 on average year over year. Still, more Americans are now choosing high-deductible plans after Trump stripped essential health care subsidies.Over the weekend, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Trump administration had uncovered more than one million people who were enrolled in Obamacare without Social Security numbers on file. Oz claimed that it was part of a plot by shady insurance agents to enroll unsuspecting—and potentially fake—Americans for Obamacare plans in order to collect “millions of dollars” in improper fees.“The reality is we have a lot of fake people on the policies. We want them off because they don’t want the insurance, they’re covered elsewhere, or at least they never wanted to be in the program,” Oz told Fox News Saturday.Neither official has presented any evidence to back up these claims.