Trump Taps Dr. Mehmet Oz to Run Medicare and Medicaid

Nov. 19, 2024 — President-elect Donald J. Trump has said that he would nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). 

CMS is the federal agency that provides health coverage to more than 160 million through Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Health Insurance Marketplace. 

Dr. Oz, 64, who lost to John Fetterman in a 2022 Pennsylvania senate race, is an author and former TV host who rose to fame as a health expert on Oprah Winfrey’s show before starting his own show. He has faced criticism for promoting controversial medical claims and treatments not supported by strong scientific evidence.

The announcement comes just days after Trump announced he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, as secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). 

“Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake,” Trump said in a statement posted on Truth Social. 

CMS is part of the HHS. 

Oz has held clinical and faculty positions at Columbia University; he started his television work in the early 2000s. He is the son of Turkish immigrants and attended Harvard University before completing a joint MD and MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania.

“America is facing a Healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again,” Trump said in a statement sent Tuesday to multiple media outlets.

A 2017 article in the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics called his credentials “impeccable,” but also called him “a physician visibly out of step with his profession,” citing controversial representations of topics ranging from weight loss interventions to whether genetically modified foods caused cancer.