ReutersDonald Trump has named Mehmet Oz, a physician and television host, to run the powerful agency that oversees the health care of millions of Americans.
“There may not be a Doctor more qualified and able than Dr. Oz to make America Healthy Again,” Trump said in a statement announcing his choice to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Oz trained as a surgeon before finding fame on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the early 2000s, later hosting his own TV show.
He has been criticized by experts for promoting what they call bad health advice about weight loss drugs and “miracle” cures, and for suggesting malaria drugs as a cure for Covid-19 in the early days of the epidemic.
Trump’s transition team said in a statement that Oz “will work with him [Health Secretary nominee] Robert F Kennedy Jr to deal with the industrial problems of sickness, and all the chronic diseases left in its wake”.
Oz will need to be confirmed by the Senate next year before he can officially run the agency.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services oversees the nation’s largest health plans, providing coverage to more than 150 million Americans. The agency regulates health insurance and sets policy that governs the prices doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are paid for medical services.
By 2023, the US government spent more than $1.4 trillion on Medicaid and Medicare combined, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Trump said in a statement that Oz “will cut waste and fraud within our nation’s most expensive Government Agency”, and the Republican Party platform promised to increase transparency, choice and competition and increase access to medicine and prescription drugs.
Oz, 64, trained as a cardiothoracic surgeon – specializing in heart and lung surgery – and worked at New York City’s Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University.
After appearing on many episodes of Oprah, he started The Dr Oz Show, where he gave health advice to viewers.
But the line between inspiration and science on the show wasn’t always clear, and Oz recommended homeopathy, alternative medicine and other treatments that critics called “pseudoscience”.
He was criticized during a Senate hearing in 2014 for endorsing unproven pills that he claimed would “get fat out of your system” and “push fat out of your belly”.
During those scenes Oz said he didn’t sell any specific nutritional supplements on his show. But he has publicly endorsed off-air products and his financial ties to health care companies were revealed in a filing made during his 2022 run for the US Senate in Pennsylvania.
During the Covid-19 outbreak, Oz promoted the anti-malarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, which experts say are ineffective against the virus.
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