Since 2023, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor nominated by President Trump to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has been a high-priced pitchman for iHerb, a California supplement retailer.
He has aggressively promoted iHerb products on social media, recommending supplements that he says will stimulate hair growth and provide smoother skin. Olive oil, which iHerb sells, he said, “might be able to actually help with Alzheimer’s.”
It turns out Dr. Oz is also a sizable investor in the supplement company, according to filings released on Wednesday by the Office of Government Ethics.
Dr. Oz pledged to sell the vast majority of his multimillion-dollar holdings, which are varied and include investments in numerous health care companies and two artificial intelligence firms.
But the fate of his iHerb holding, one of the largest in his portfolio and valued at an unspecified figure in the range of $5 million to $25 million, is unclear, according to experts who reviewed his disclosure forms.
In one filing, Dr. Oz pledged to divest his iHerb holdings “as soon as practicable but not later than 90 days after confirmation” by the Senate to the government post.
In another government disclosure, he repeated that language but then held open the possibility that even once he is at the helm of the agency, he might retain some iHerb stock until the company goes public or is bought. Either of those events could cause the stocks to soar and result in a windfall for Dr. Oz.
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in government ethics, said that the conflicting language in the disclosures left it vague as to whether he would sell his holdings. “It is poorly drafted and unclear,” she said, noting it even contained a typographical error.
Richard W. Painter, a former ethics official in the administration of George W. Bush, said the wording was ambiguous. “I cannot figure out if he is going to sell or not,” he said.
Dr. Oz, 64, also indicated in the filings that he would retain a financial interest in an entity called iHerb Oz Partners L.L.C., created in 2023 when he became the company’s pitchman. What the entity does is unknown, and so is whether it has a separate ownership stake in iHerb.
Christopher Krepich, a spokesman for Dr. Oz, declined to discuss the apparent discrepancy.
Dr. Oz, a heart surgeon who rose to fame as the host of a daytime television show that ran for 13 seasons, has frequently been criticized for supporting questionable medical treatments and for the promotion of products on his show. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022.
His financial filings underscore how wealthy Dr. Oz and his family are, with a net worth somewhere in the neighborhood of roughly $90 million to $335 million. Lisa Oz, his wife, is among numerous heirs to one of the nation’s largest private companies, Asplundh Tree Expert, which provides tree-removal and related services for utilities and municipalities. It is impossible to pinpoint the couples’s net worth because the financial disclosure forms allow estimates of asset values to be listed under a wide range.
Dr. Oz is preparing for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, meeting with various lawmakers in Washington. The panel has not set a date for his testimony but it is expected to do so in the coming weeks now that his financial and ethics papers have been filed with the committee.
His investments in iHerb and in other health care companies is likely to be a focus for some lawmakers. As the country’s top Medicare official, he could press private plans that offer insurance under the federal program to increase their coverage of vitamins and supplements sold by iHerb and others.
Dr. Oz listed dozens of investments, including in health care companies that do business with the U.S. government, that he said he would end his associations with and would divest from. Among those holdings are UnitedHealth Group, the conglomerate that sells private insurance plans for older adults on Medicare, pharmaceutical giants like AbbVie and Eli Lilly, the for-profit hospital chain HCA Healthcare and the supplement company PanTheryx.
In the new filings, Dr. Oz also listed his role as an adviser to three health care companies: Eko Health, the maker of digital stethoscopes; Housey Pharma; and Cardiology Partners, a Florida cardiology practice. In the government ethics agreement, he said that if confirmed he would resign from his role at those companies and divest his holdings in them.
He also said he planned to divest his stock in several major technology companies, including Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. He owns Bitcoin valued at as much as $1 million. It was not among the assets listed in the filings that he would sell.
