Dr. Mehmet Oz, former celebrity television host and Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania, poses for a portrait outside a polling place during the primary election in Rockledge, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 2022.
Hannah Beier | Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he would nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz, a celebrity television host and former U.S. Senate candidate, to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
CMS operates or oversees programs that provide health coverage to about half of Americans, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and Obamacare's marketplace, Healthcare.gov.
Those four programs represent $1.6 trillion in spending, or nearly 25% of the entire federal budget, which Trump highlighted when he announced that Oz, a heart surgeon, was his pick to lead CMS, a division of the Department of Health. and Human Services.
Trump said last week that he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, to be HHS secretary.
Oz previously hosted “The Dr. Oz Show,” a syndicated daytime television program, for more than a dozen years. He was the Republican nominee for a Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat in 2022, losing to Democratic Senator John Fetterman.
“America is facing a health care crisis and there may be no doctor more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday.
“He is an eminent physician, cardiac surgeon, inventor and world-class communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades. Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to address the disease industrial complex. , and all the horrible chronic illnesses it left in its wake.
“Our failed health care system hurts ordinary Americans and crushes our country's budget,” Trump said.
“Dr. Oz will be a leader in encouraging disease prevention, so that we get the best outcomes in the world for every dollar we spend on health care in our great country,” Trump said. “It will also reduce waste and fraud within our country's most expensive government agency, which accounts for one-third of our nation's health care spending and one-quarter of our entire national budget.”
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure is the current administrator of CMS.
Oz holds dual American and Turkish citizenship, as he is the son of Turkish immigrants. During his campaign for the Senate, he promised to renounce his Turkish citizenship if elected.
Trump has been a staunch critic of Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act is informally known, and during his first year in the White House he tried (and failed) to get Congress to repeal the law, which offers subsidies to many people who they buy individual medical care. insurance coverage.
