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President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Mehmet Oz as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, potentially putting the TV personality, former physician and failed U.S. Senate candidate in charge of overseeing two of the country’s biggest health programs.
“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 Tuesday.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump said Oz would work alongside his health secretary pick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”
Oz must be confirmed by the Senate to assume the position.
Like Kennedy, Oz has a history of pushing dubious and debunked medical conspiracy theories. Oz made a number of false or unproven medical claims on his daytime TV show, “The Dr. Oz Show,” which aired from 2009 to 2022, and he often promoted bogus weight loss products. Research published in the British Medical Journal in 2014 found that less than half of the medical recommendations on Oz’s TV show were supported by evidence.
Oz also shared misleading claims during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are effective treatments for the coronavirus — claims that Trump echoed at the time.