President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has chosen cardiothoracic surgeon and TV personality Mehmet Oz, MD, to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate in January, Dr. Oz, who has clashed with physicians and other healthcare leaders on several fronts, would lead the agency that provides health coverage to more than 160 million Americans through Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and the Health Insurance Marketplace. The agency falls under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and it manages about one-fourth of all federal spending. Trump has named Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to lead HHS, and that appointment is also pending Senate confirmation.
Trump said in his announcement, “America is facing a Healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again. He is an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades.
“Our broken Healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget,” the statement said. “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 Healthcare.”
Dr. Oz, a Republican, has not had experience in running a federal bureaucracy. In November 2022, he ran for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania and was defeated by the Democrat Lt. Gov. of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman.
Among those immediately criticizing the appointment were Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who formerly led the Senate health committee.
“Even putting aside the raft of alarming pseudoscience Dr. Oz has previously endorsed, it is deeply disappointing to see someone with zero qualifications being announced to head up such a critical agency,” Sen. Murray said in a statement. “I am also profoundly concerned by the extreme anti-abortion views Dr. Oz holds — CMS has oversight over a wide range of reproductive health care issues and the last thing women in America need is more extremist Republicans getting involved in their personal health care decisions.”
Dr. Oz has called abortion “murder” at any stage of pregnancy. In 2014, under pressure from Congress, Dr. Oz retreated from hyping products on his now-defunct talk show as miracle weight-loss pills.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, he promoted hydroxychloroquine, despite questions about whether it was safe or effective.
In an article published in 2017 in the AMA Journal of Ethics, doctors wrote, “Dr. Oz is a dangerous rogue unfit for the office of America’s doctor. “
In 2020, Dr. Oz coauthored an editorial supporting universal healthcare. Under the proposal he described, every American not covered by Medicaid would be enrolled in a private Medicare Advantage plan. “We could fund this universal coverage entirely with full financial security by using an affordable 20% payroll tax, which is close to the amount most employers currently spend to buy insured care,” the editorial said.
Dr. Oz graduated from Harvard University and earned a simultaneous MBA/MD from the Wharton School of Business and University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. He had been the director of the Cardiovascular Institute at New York Presbyterian Hospital and vice-chairman and professor of surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His title was changed to Professor Emeritus of Surgery in 2018.
This article was originally published on November 20, 2024 on MedCentral, a HealthCentral Corporation site dedicated to informing, supporting, and connecting clinicians across medical disciplines.
