During a visit to the White House, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz warned that declining birth rates are pushing the United States into what he described as a fertility crisis.
“1 in 3 Americans are underbabied,” Oz said, adding, “That means you either don’t have any children or you have less children than you would normally want to have.” He added that “we have a crisis that’s causing our fertility rate to drop below 1.5,” well under the “replacement rate” of 2.1 needed to sustain population levels, according to his remarks.
“We’re way below what we need just to even replace the people that we have in America,” Oz said.
“Dr. Oz says a third of Americans are “underbabied” and the U.S. is facing a growing fertility crisis,” MAHA Action wrote in a May 17 post on X.
The discussion comes as federal family planning policy under Title X is undergoing renewed scrutiny. Title X, the nation’s primary federal program for family planning services, has historically supported access to contraception and reproductive health care for millions of low-income Americans. Recent reporting has noted that shifts in the program’s emphasis under the current administration have sparked debate over whether federal policy should prioritize addressing declining birth rates alongside traditional family planning services.
Together, the policy changes and demographic trends have elevated fertility rates into a broader political issue, with competing interpretations over causes and potential solutions. While some policymakers frame declining births as a structural national challenge requiring intervention, others argue that fertility trends are driven by broader social and economic factors beyond the reach of federal health programs.
Dr. Mehmet Oz serves as the 17th Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency responsible for administering Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and Affordable Care Act coverage for more than 160 million Americans. According to CMS, he is a cardiothoracic surgeon by training and a Professor Emeritus at NY Presbyterian–Columbia Medical Center. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and completed both his medical degree and MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine and Wharton School.
