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President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday he plans to nominate Mehmet Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon and former daytime television host, as administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Oz, a 64-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon, has no experience running a government agency, and has been accused by many U.S. physicians and other health experts of peddling pseudoscience. (Jarvie, 11/19)

Oz spent the bulk of his medical and academic career at Columbia University, where he was a professor of medicine and a celebrated cardiothoracic surgeon. In 2022, Columbia cut ties with him after facing pressure to do so for nearly a decade. Oz has faced Senate grilling before for his promotion of weight-loss products on his show. He told senators in 2014 that his image and quotes were used unfairly to hawk scam products. This time around, early signs from the Senate are positive. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who sits on the committee that will handle Oz’s nomination, wrote on the social platform X: “Glad to hear Dr. Oz has been nominated for CMS administrator. It has been over a decade since a physician has been at the helm of CMS, and I look forward to discussing his priorities.” (Zhang, Owermohle, Facher and Bannow, 11/19)

Oz has been a major supporter of Medicare Advantage, the Medicare-approved private option that has grown in popularity but has come under intense scrutiny for care denials and alleged overbilling. During his Senate campaign, Oz pushed a “Medicare Advantage for All” plan that would expand the program. “These plans are popular among seniors, consistently provide quality care and have a needed incentive to keep costs low,” Oz said in an AARP candidate questionnaire. In August, he posted a YouTube video to his nearly 2 million subscribers on “the benefits of enrolling” in Medicare Advantage. (Leonard and King, 11/19)

In 2014, a study in the British Medical Journal found that more than half the recommendations made on “The Dr. Oz Show” were either not backed up by, or contradicted, scientific research. In 2003, he was banned from presenting research at the American Association for Thoracic Surgery conference or in its journal for two years over concerns that claims made in a research paper abstract he led were not backed by the data in the study. (Vinall, 11/20)

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania expressed openness to confirm his erstwhile Republican opponent Dr Mehmet Oz, whom President-elect Donald Trump nominated to lead the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. Fetterman beat Oz in an intensely personal race for Senate in 2022. But Fetterman told The Independent in an interview that he would be open to voting for Oz. “Do you think he's my first choice?” he said. “Do you think Trump is my first one? But it’s like yeah, here we are.” (Garcia, 11/20)

Dr. Mehmet Oz would be in a position to grant waiver requests from conservative-led states intent on reshaping Medicaid, including imposing work requirements on recipients, which is something the first Trump administration tried to do. (Habeshian, 11/20)

Oz is passionate about wacky — and often widely debunked — medicines. In 2010, he said that sleeping with a bar of lavender soap could help to prevent restless leg syndrome. On an episode of The Dr. Oz Show, which ran for 13 seasons, he said: “I know this sounds crazy, but people put it under their sheets.” It was widely refuted by medical experts. A group of ten doctors later demanded that Oz be fired from Columbia University’s medical faculty, arguing that he had “repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine”. The university did not take action. (Agnew, 11/20)

Before jumping into the Republican race for US Senate in Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz regularly supported health insurance mandates and promoted Obamacare, taking positions that are unusual for a Republican candidate. A review by CNN’s KFile of hundreds of Oz’s television, radio, print and social media appearances over more than a decade found that Oz has supported a health insurance mandate for “everyone … to be in the system” and backed government-provided health care coverage for poor Americans and for minors. Of the health care systems he liked most, Oz has cited Germany’s and Switzerland’s, which utilize mandatory universal systems administered by private companies. (Steck, Myers and Woodward, 3/13/22)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: From Dr. Oz To Heart Valves: A Tiny Device Charted A Contentious Path Through The FDA 

In 2013, the FDA approved an implantable device to treat leaky heart valves. Among its inventors was Mehmet Oz, the former television personality and former U.S. Senate candidate widely known as “Dr. Oz.” In online videos, Oz has called the process that brought the MitraClip device to market an example of American medicine firing “on all cylinders,” and he has compared it to “landing a man on the moon.” (Hilzenrath and Hacker, 7/9)