President-elect Donald Trump picks TV’s Dr. Oz to run US Medicare and Medicaid, to work closely with RFK Jr
US President-elect Donald Trump has chosen celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz to serve as administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Oz, known as Dr Oz on his eponymous TV program, unsuccessfully ran for US Senate in 2022 with the endorsement of the then-former president Trump.
In announcing Dr Oz’s nomination, Mr Trump said he would work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr, who he tipped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services to “take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake”.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“Our broken Healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget,” Mr Trump wrote.
“Dr Oz will be a leader in incentivising Disease Prevention, so we get the best results in the World for every dollar we spend on Healthcare in our Great Country.
“He will also cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget.”
Prior to his run for Senate, Oz hosted his eponymous Dr Oz Show and was a frequent guest on Oprah Winfrey’s daytime talk show, to discuss health and medicine concerns and often provided medical advice — which sometimes proved controversial.
In 2014, a study published in the British Medical Journal declared that half of Dr Oz’s advice was “baseless or wrong” — determined after fact-checking 479 medical recommendations made across 40 episodes.
Another medical talk show, The Doctors, was also referenced in the paper, which warned the public to be “skeptical about recommendations made” on such shows.
In June that year, he was hauled in front of Congress and accused of giving people false hope with his televised claims.
In 2015, a group of doctors wrote to Columbia University’s dean of medicine criticising the school’s “unacceptable” partnership with Dr Oz, citing his “disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine”.
