Donald Trump names TV doctor Mehmet Oz as medicare, medicaid chief

By Airielle Lowe and John Tozzi

 

President-elect Donald Trump nominated celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency that manages $1.7 trillion in annual spending for federal programs insuring more than one-third of Americans.

 

“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. “Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”

 

 

The surprise pick, like the selection of Kennedy last week, shows Trump is turning to unconventional outsiders with novel resumes in an effort to radically overhaul the nation’s health agencies. Oz, who first came to prominence when he was dubbed “America’s doctor” on Oprah Winfrey’s top-rated daytime television show, is a surgeon with no government experience.

 

The appointment “falls under the ‘burn it all down’” ethos Trump is tapping for health officials, said David Amsellem, a pharmaceutical analyst at Piper Sandler, in an email. 

 

Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician who is expected to chair the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that will vet the nomination in the next Congress, expressed support in a post on X.

 

“It has been over a decade since a physician has been at the helm of CMS, and I look forward to discussing his priorities,” Cassidy wrote.

 

The celebrity doctor ran for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022, and with Trump’s endorsement defeated former Bridgewater Associates chief executive officer Dave McCormick in a fiercely contested Republican primary. He subsequently lost to Democrat John Fetterman in the general election.

 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Oz became an informal health adviser to Trump, then serving his first White House term. He promoted the use of unproven medicines to treat the virus, including the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.

 

Central Role 

If confirmed as head of CMS, Oz would have a central role in overseeing health-care policy, including federal insurance programs that provide coverage to millions of older Americans and the poor. 

 

Medicare covers more than 67 million seniors and people with disabilities, while Medicaid covers almost 80 million low-income Americans.

 

The pick adds uncertainty for the companies that rely on federal health programs for revenue, from the largest US insurers like UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Elevance Health Inc. to large hospital operators like HCA Healthcare Inc. 

 

A 2020 Forbes column Oz co-authored proposed replacing employer-provided health coverage with an expanded version of private Medicare Advantage plans, to be financed by a 20% payroll tax.

 

Shares of insurers that sell private Medicare plans, including UnitedHealth and Humana Inc., rose slightly in trading after US markets closed.

 

Unconventional Pick  

Oz wasn’t on most of the public short lists speculating about who Trump might tap to lead the agency. He isn’t known for expertise in health financing or policy, the bread-and-butter work of CMS.

 

The spectacle of Oz leading the normally staid agency would raise its public profile, but bypass conservative health policy veterans who know their way around its many complex policies.

 

“This nomination process is like a carnival,” Spencer Perlman, an analyst with researcher Veda Partners, said in an email. While the outsider picks “may thrill the President-elect’s base,” their lack of experience may make it harder for the administration to get new policies through the federal bureaucracy, he wrote.

 

Trump is looking for people who are “not shackled by the norms and the conventional wisdom,” said Ge Bai, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She said Trump has been picking leaders who are good at connecting with voters, and Oz’s media experience would help.

 

It’s another wild card appointment for Wall Street and the health-care industry, and a dramatic break from former CMS Administrator Seema Verma, who led the agency during Trump’s first term.

 

Oz “understands the industry both as a clinician and product developer,” Mizuho’s Jared Holz said in an interview, but the pick is “a little bit outside the scope most investors were probably expecting.”

 

Abortion Policy  

If confirmed at CMS, he’ll have influence over policies that may determine access to reproductive health care. The Biden administration, for example, has tried to clarify that federal requirements for hospitals to provide emergency care supersede state abortion bans.

 

During his 2022 Senate campaign, Oz expressed support for states and local politicians to regulate abortion.

 

“There should not be involvement from the federal government,” he said in a debate with Fetterman. “I want women, doctors, local political leaders, letting the democracy that’s always allowed our nation to thrive to put the best ideas forward so states can decide for themselves.”

 

The agency also oversees the Affordable Care Act exchanges, also known as Obamacare markets, a policy achievement that Trump tried to uproot during his first term. 

 

Trump has long wanted to scrap the ACA. When pressed on what he wanted to see in its place during a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, his general-election opponent, Trump declined to offer specifics, saying he had the “concepts of a plan” in mind. 

 

Republicans failed to repeal the law when Trump was in previously in office.

 

‘Quack Treatments’ 

Oz, long affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, has been known for his embrace of alternative and unconventional treatments. He’s drawn criticism for promoting unproven products, including supplements and vitamins.

 

In 2015, physicians accusing him of “promoting quack treatments” sought to have Oz ousted from Columbia University, where he had a faculty appointment. The university cut ties during his 2022 Senate run.

 

Oz “profits from fringe medical ideas,” Lawrence Gostin, a global health expert at Georgetown University’s law school, said in a post on X. Along with Kennedy, Oz’s nomination shows “Trump is giving his middle finger to science,” he wrote.

 

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer tapped by Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, faced his own barrage of criticism for a history of promoting debunked theories that vaccines cause autism.