The elected president donald trump announced this Tuesday the appointment of Dr. Mehmet Oz, known as Dr. Oz on his television programs, as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Servicessocial health assistance programs aimed at elderly and low-income people.
“The United States is facing a health care crisis and there may be no more qualified and capable doctor than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again,” the former president (2017-2021) noted in a statement. about him controversial surgeon, who throughout his career has advocated various pseudosciences.
Among others it is alternative medicine advocatefaith healing and various paranormal beliefs, a situation that has brought him criticism from numerous medical publications.
According to Trump, Oz is “an eminent doctor, world-class cardiac surgeon, inventor and communicator who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades.”
Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the former presidential candidate known for his vaccine conspiracy theories, who was nominated last week as future Secretary of Health.
In the statement, Trump – who won the elections on November 5 and will take office as president on January 20 – stated that the health care system is “broken”, “hurts ordinary Americans and crushes the budget” of the country.
Oz will thus dedicate himself, he stated, to reduce “waste” and “fraud”, within “the most expensive government agency” in the United States, which represents “a third of health care spending” in the country and “a quarter” of the national budget, he said.
The son of Turkish immigrants, Oz grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and He graduated from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
He began his television career in the Discovery Channel series Second opinion with Dr. Oz and was a regular guest at The Oprah Winfrey Show. In 2009 he created The Dr. Oz Showa daily television program on medical and health topics that It lasted 13 seasons.
Oz recently tried to make his jump into politics and ran for the 2022 United States Senate election in Pennsylvania. He lost the race to John Fetterman, even though Trump had publicly shown his support for him.