President-Elect Trump to Pick Mehmet Oz to Head CMS

TUESDAY, Nov. 19, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate Mehmet Oz, M.D., to head the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

In a statement, Trump said that Oz will "work closely with Robert Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake," The New York Times reported. Trump also remarked that Oz had "won nine Daytime Emmy Awards hosting 'The Dr. Oz Show,' where he taught millions of Americans how to make healthier lifestyle choices."

Oz, the son of Turkish immigrants, worked as a heart surgeon before helming a hugely successful daytime talk show, focused on health and medicine, from 2009 through 2022. He went on to lose a 2022 bid to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate to Democrat John Fetterman.

Oz emerged as a conservative firebrand during and after the pandemic, railing against policies he claimed "took away our freedom." During the pandemic, he was a vocal supporter of now-discredited COVID-19 "treatments" such as hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine.

Earlier in his career, Oz was forced to testify before Congress for promoting miracle weight-loss pills without any proof of efficacy.

In 2020, Oz penned an opinion column in Forbes in which he called for a form of universal health coverage in which any American not covered by Medicaid would be enrolled in a private Medicare Advantage plan. An "affordable 20 percent payroll tax" would pay for the coverage, he wrote.

The New York Times Article