Trump to nominate Dr. Oz to lead CMS

President-elect Donald Trump said he would nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

CMS operates or oversees health-care programs that provide coverage to about 1 out of every 2 Americans, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Affordable Care Act marketplace program Healthcare.gov.

Oz, if confirmed by the Senate, would head up an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The four main CMS programs mentioned above account for $1.6 trillion in federal spending – nearly 25% of the federal budget.

“Our broken Healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget,” Trump said in a statement announcing his intention to nominate Oz.

‘The best results’ promised

“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 in our Great Country,” Trump said. “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.”

Oz is the son of Turkish immigrants and graduated from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2001, Oz became a professor of surgery at Columbia University, and later retired to professor emeritus in 2018.

He became a media figure in 2003, with the Discovery channel TV show, Second Opinion with Dr. Oz. He caught the attention of talk show mogul Oprah Winfrey, making 60 appearances on her syndicated talk show. From there, he branched out into his own show, The Dr. Oz Show, which ran for 13 seasons beginning in 2009.

During his time on TV, Oz was controversial for promoting what some called misleading and false claims about health and science, particularly for his touting the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. He owned stock in two companies that produce the drug.

Oz was the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania in 2022 but lost the election to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

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