President-elect Donald Trump introduced Tuesday he plans to appoint Mehmet Oz, a celeb coronary heart surgeon and former daytime tv host, as administrator for the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Companies.
Oz, a 64-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon, has no expertise working a authorities company, and has been accused by many U.S. physicians and different well being consultants of peddling pseudoscience.
For the file:
4:29 p.m. Nov. 19, 2024An earlier model of this text referred to the nominee as OuncesMehmet. His title is Mehmet Oz.
If his nomination is authorized by the Senate, Ounceswill helm a federal company that gives well being protection to greater than 160 million individuals and oversees vital packages similar to Medicare, Medicaid and the Youngsters’s Well being Insurance coverage Program.
“I’ve identified Dr. Ouncesfor a few years, and I’m assured he’ll struggle to make sure everybody in America receives the absolute best Healthcare, so our Nation could be Nice and Wholesome Once more!” Trump stated in an announcement on his TruthSocial platform.
Trump stated Ounceswould work carefully with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom the previous president nominated final week to steer the Division of Well being and Human Companies. Collectively, Trump stated in his assertion, the 2 males would tackle “the sickness industrial complicated, and all of the horrible continual ailments left in its wake.”
“Our damaged Healthcare System harms on a regular basis Individuals, and crushes our Nation’s funds,” Trump stated. “Dr. Ounceswill probably be a frontrunner in incentivizing Illness Prevention. He may also lower waste and fraud inside our Nation’s costliest Authorities Company.”
The son of Turkish mother and father, Ouncesgraduated from Harvard earlier than getting his medical diploma and grasp’s of enterprise at College of Pennsylvania. He went on to function a professor of surgical procedure at Columbia College. After rising to fame as a celeb doctor on Oprah Winfrey’s speak present, Ounceshosted “The Dr. OuncesShow” from 2009 to 2022. In 2008, Time journal included Ounceson its checklist of “100 Most Influential Individuals.”
However Ouncesis a controversial determine within the medical world whose tv appearances have drawn criticism from fellow physicians who say he backs questionable different drugs and unproven weight reduction merchandise. In 2012, Ouncesinvited a lady onto his present who claimed she was a psychic and will talk with the useless. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, Ouncespromoted hydroxychloroquine as a therapy.
At a 2014 congressional listening to, then-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) scolded Ouncesfor his hype of weight reduction merchandise.
“I don’t get why it’s a must to say these items, as a result of you understand it’s not true,” McCaskill instructed Oz. “So why — when you could have this superb megaphone and this superb capability to speak — why would you cheapen your present by saying issues like that?”
After Trump’s announcement Tuesday, many public well being consultants took to social media to denounce Oz.
Lawrence Gostin, a regulation professor at Georgetown College who makes a speciality of public well being regulation and directs the World Well being Group’s Middle on International Well being Regulation, stated Ounceswas unfit to steer the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Companies.
“He peddles conspiracy theories on vaccines & pretend cures,” Gostin posted. “He earnings from fringe medical concepts. By nominating RFK Jr & Mehmet Oz, Trump is giving his center finger to science. Having labored for 40 years in public well being, it’s totally disheartening.”
“Insanity,” wrote Timothy Caulfield, a professor of well being regulation and science coverage on the College of Alberta. “One other anti-science quack given energy over a science-informed establishment.”
In 2022, Ouncesran an unsuccessful marketing campaign to signify Pennsylvania within the Senate. Backed by Trump, he forged himself as a reasonable Republican who needed to chop inflation and crime, however he was finally defeated by Democrat John Fetterman.
Reproductive rights teams sounded the alarm that Oz, who celebrated the U.S. Supreme Courtroom’s 2022 overturning of abortion rights lengthy assured by Roe vs. Wade, would preside over an company that determines what sort of household planning providers state Medicaid packages provide low-income Individuals.
“Mehmet Ouncesis an unqualified anti-abortion extremist who has no enterprise main one of many largest federal businesses overseeing Individuals’ well being care,” stated Mini Timmaraju, president and chief govt of Reproductive Freedom for All, in an announcement. “Pennsylvania voters already rejected him and his bold-faced assaults on reproductive freedom — and now Trump is giving him a possibility to pressure them on all Individuals via the implementation of his Undertaking 2025 agenda.”
In selecting Oz, Trump continues his technique of nominating unorthodox tv personalities to his administration for his second time period: Final week, he nominated Pete Hegseth, a Nationwide Guard veteran and “Fox & Associates” host, as secretary of Protection. On Monday, he nominated former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy, generally known as co-host of “The Backside Line” on Fox Enterprise and a onetime actuality TV star, to helm the Division of Transportation.
