Trump nominates Dr. Oz to head Medicare and Medicaid and help take on 'illness industrial complex'

President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday helium plans to nominate Mehmet Oz, a personage bosom surgeon and erstwhile daytime tv host, arsenic head for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Oz, a 64-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon, has nary acquisition moving a authorities agency, and has been accused by galore U.S. physicians and different wellness experts of peddling pseudoscience.

If his information is approved by the Senate, Oz volition caput a national bureau that provides wellness sum to much than 160 cardinal radical and oversees captious programs specified arsenic Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“I person known Dr. Oz for galore years, and I americium assured helium volition combat to guarantee everyone successful America receives the champion imaginable Healthcare, truthful our Country tin beryllium Great and Healthy Again!” Trump said successful a connection connected his Truth Social platform.

Trump said Oz would enactment intimately with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom the erstwhile president nominated past week to pb the Department of Health and Human Services. Together, Trump said successful his statement, the 2 men would instrumentality connected “the unwellness concern complex, and each the horrible chronic diseases near successful its wake.”

“Our breached Healthcare System harms mundane Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget,” Trump said. “Dr. Oz volition beryllium a person successful incentivizing Disease Prevention. He volition besides chopped discarded and fraud wrong our Country’s astir costly Government Agency.”

The lad of Turkish parents, Oz graduated from Harvard earlier getting his aesculapian grade and master’s of concern astatine University of Pennsylvania. He went connected to service arsenic a prof of country astatine Columbia University. After rising to fame arsenic a personage doc connected Oprah Winfrey’s speech show, Oz hosted “The Dr. Oz Show” from 2009 to 2022. In 2008, Time mag included Oz connected its database of “100 Most Influential People.”

But Oz is simply a arguable fig successful the aesculapian satellite whose tv appearances person drawn disapproval from chap physicians who accidental helium backs questionable alternate medicine and unproven value nonaccomplishment products. In 2012, Oz invited a pistillate onto his amusement who claimed she was a psychic and could pass with the dead. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Oz promoted hydroxychloroquine arsenic a attraction contempt a deficiency of technological evidence.

At a 2014 legislature hearing, then-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) scolded Oz for his hype of value nonaccomplishment products. “I don’t get wherefore you person to accidental this stuff, due to the fact that you cognize it’s not true,” she told Oz. “So wherefore — erstwhile you person this astonishing megaphone and this astonishing quality to pass — wherefore would you cheapen your amusement by saying things similar that?”

After Trump’s announcement Tuesday, galore nationalist wellness experts took to societal media to denounce Oz.

Lawrence Gostin, a instrumentality prof astatine Georgetown University who specializes successful nationalist wellness instrumentality and directs the World Health Organization’s Center connected Global Health Law, said Oz was unfit to pb the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“He peddles conspiracy theories connected vaccines & fake cures,” Gostin posted. “He profits from fringe aesculapian ideas. By nominating RFK Jr & Mehmet Oz, Trump is giving his mediate digit to science. Having worked for 40 years successful nationalist health, it’s utterly disheartening.”

“Madness,” wrote Timothy Caulfield, a prof of wellness instrumentality and subject argumentation astatine the University of Alberta. “Another anti-science quack fixed powerfulness implicit a science-informed institution.”

In 2022, Oz ran an unsuccessful campaign to correspond Pennsylvania successful the Senate. Backed by Trump, helium formed himself arsenic a mean Republican who wanted to chopped ostentation and crime, but helium was yet defeated by Democrat John Fetterman.

In picking Oz, Trump continues his strategy of nominating unorthodox TV personalities to his medication for his 2nd term.

Last week, helium nominated Pete Hegseth, a National Guard seasoned and “Fox & Friends” host, arsenic caput of Defense. On Monday, helium nominated erstwhile Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy, known arsenic co-host of “The Bottom Line” connected Fox Business and a onetime world TV star, to caput the Department of Transportation.