President-elect Donald Trump (R) has picked celeb doctor Dr. Mehmet Oz (L) to guide CMS. Right here they’re seen collectively throughout a rally on the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport November 5, 2022 in Latrobe, Pa., when Oz was operating for Senate in that state.
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President-elect Donald Trump nominated celeb doctor Mehmet Oz to go the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Providers.
Trump made the announcement Tuesday on Reality Social and in a press launch to reporters.
“Dr. Oz will work carefully with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to tackle the sickness industrial advanced, and all of the horrible persistent illnesses left in its wake,” Trump stated within the announcement.
CMS is a part of the Division of Well being and Human Providers, the company that Kennedy will lead if his nomination is confirmed. CMS manages Medicare, Medicaid and the Inexpensive Care Act marketplaces for particular person insurance coverage, representing well being protection for 155 million Individuals.
Trump’s announcement notes that Oz graduated from Harvard, and earned a joint MD and MBA from the College of Pennsylvania — and that he gained 9 Daytime Emmys for the Dr. Oz Present.
Oz, 64, is a cardiothoracic surgeon who hosted a TV discuss present centered on well being for a decade. He constructed his TV profession after being a frequent visitor on the Oprah Winfrey Present.
Oz confronted criticism for giving Kennedy and different vaccine denialists a platform in appearances on his present. Throughout the pandemic, Oz boosted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 with out proof.
Oz ran for Senate as a Republican in Pennsylvania in 2022, and he vented his frustrations with the well being institution on the marketing campaign path. Trump endorsed him however Oz misplaced to Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat. Throughout his Senate bid, NPR reported that he argued that the federal government had “patronized and misled” the general public in the course of the COVID pandemic. “COVID-19 grew to become an excuse for the federal government and elite thinkers who managed the technique of communication to droop debate,” he stated.
Oz has promoted questionable well being recommendation to nationwide tv audiences. In 2014, he testified earlier than the Senate after being accused on false promoting for dietary supplements he promoted on his present. In 2015, ten docs wrote a letter urging Columbia College’s medical college l to fireplace him, arguing that a lot of the recommendation on his TV present has been discovered to be unsupported by scientific proof, and in some circumstances, contradicted by it.
Lawrence Gostin, school director of the O’Neill Institute for Nationwide and World Well being Legislation at Georgetown College, wrote on X that Oz is “unfit” to run CMS. “He peddles conspiracy theories on vaccines & pretend cures. He income from fringe medical concepts. By nominating RFK Jr & Mehmet Oz, Trump is giving his center finger to science,” wrote Gostin on X.
