Trump Nominates ‘Dr Oz’ as Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator | Trump’s administration

Donald Trump has nominated Mehmet Oz, best known globally as Dr Oz, to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator.

“Our broken health care system is hurting ordinary Americans and crushing our nation’s budget,” Trump wrote in his announcement of Oz’s nomination.

“Dr. Oz will be a leader in incentivizing disease prevention so we get the best results in the world for every dollar we spend on health care in our great country. He will also cut waste and fraud within our nation’s most expensive government agency, which is a third of our nation’s health care spending and a quarter of our entire national budget.”

Trump emphasized that he plans to have Oz work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr., his nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, “to address the industrial disease complex and all the horrible chronic diseases that remain in its wake”.

Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist who ran as an independent in the 2024 presidential election and adopted a “make America healthy again” slogan, an offshoot of Trump’s “make America great again”.

The combination of Kennedy and Oz in leading health policy roles will receive significant pushback from health organizations. Oz’s role does not require Senate confirmation, while Kennedy’s does.

Oz previously praised Kennedy’s appointment, saying, “Americans need better research on healthy lifestyle choices from unbiased scientists and @RobertKennedyJr can help as HHS Secretary.” Oz’s latest post on X promotes a multivitamin and dietary supplement business.

The move comes after Oz ran for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022, losing to John Fetterman but securing Trump’s endorsement.

Fetterman said of Oz’s nomination, “Well, I’ve been very, very clear, if Dr. Oz agrees to protect and preserve Medicaid and Medicare, I will absolutely vote for the guy,” according to the news outlet Notes.

Before his Senate run, Oz was the self-titled host of the Dr Oz Show and a frequent guest on Oprah Winfrey’s show, often providing medical advice. He is a cardiothoracic surgeon who co-founded a cardiac care center earlier in his career and taught at Columbia University. Like Trump, he gained national attention through reality television.

His advice has proven so controversial that a 2014 British Medical Journal study declared half of it “groundless or wrong“. A year later, in 2015, a significant group of doctors wrote to Columbia’s dean of medicinecriticizes the school’s partnership with him, calling it “unacceptable”.

Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Oz promoted malaria drugs including hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus in an appearance on Fox News calling the discredited treatments a “game changer”. His comments on the drug caught Trump’s attention, CNN reported then.