Trump taps TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead key Medicare and Medicaid agency
Washington — President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has selected Dr. Mehmet Oz — a celebrity heart surgeon who hosted a daytime television show — to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The agency falls under the Department of Health and Human Services and oversees Medicare, the federal portion of the Medicaid program, the Children's Health Insurance Program and the federal health insurance marketplace. Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services. Both positions require Senate confirmation.
"America is facing a health care crisis, and there may be no physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again," Trump said in a statement. "He is an eminent physician, heart surgeon, inventor, and world-class communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades."
The president-elect said Oz will work with Kennedy, if he is confirmed, "to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake." He also indicated there may be cuts to CMS, writing that Oz "will also cut waste and fraud within our country's most expensive government agency, which is a third of our nation's healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire national budget."
More than 100 million Americans participate in the major programs that CMS oversees — Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP — according to the agency.
Oz ran for Senate in 2022 in Pennsylvania and received Trump's endorsement, but was defeated by Democratic Sen. John Fetterman.
Asked about the pick by CBS News on Tuesday, Fetterman said he would be open to confirming his former opponent.
"He's going to have a hearing, and then we're going to find out what he's about," Fetterman said. "I'm not going to have like, a knee jerk, 'well, no, just because he said to mean things to me in an election or whatever' — we're all professionals. We got to move on that. And if he meets my criteria then I'll vote for him."
Years before mounting his Senate run, he came under scrutiny by Congress for featuring on his show unproven "miracle" weight-loss supplements. During a Senate committee hearing in June 2014, lawmakers accused Oz of misleading consumers about one of those supplements, a green coffee bean extract that he promoted on his eponymous daytime television show.
Oz rose to fame for his appearances on Oprah Winfrey's show, and his own weekday program ran from 2009 to 2022, when he launched his Senate campaign.