A look at Dr. Oz’s health care record as he’s nominated to key post by Trump

President-elect Trump has named two more people to his administration: investment banker Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary and Dr. Mehmet Oz to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The noted TV personality and heart surgeon will oversee programs that provide health care coverage to about half of all Americans. Amna Nawaz discussed more with Lev Fasher of STAT News.
Amna Nawaz:
President-elect Donald Trump has named two more people to his administration, investment banker Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the noted TV personality and heart surgeon, to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Dr. Oz will oversee programs that provide health care coverage to about half of all Americans.
His talk show, which ran for nearly 15 years, was one of the most popular during the daytime, but he’s pushed questionable medical treatments not backed by experts and has sometimes promoted misinformation.
In making the announcement, Mr. Trump said that Dr. Oz fit right in with the make America healthy campaign.
Lev Facher of STAT News has been following Oz’s career, and he joins me now.
Lev, thanks for being with us.
So you profiled Dr. Oz back during his Senate run in 2022 in Pennsylvania, and back then you pointed out that, while he is a medical doctor and a noted heart surgeon, he also spent much of his career embracing untruths, as you put it. What did you mean by that and what kind of reaction are you hearing to him being named to lead CMS?
Lev Facher, STAT News:
That’s right.
This is someone who, in the course of his famous TV show, his career as a celebrity doctor, essentially, was known for promoting weight loss supplements that didn’t have any evidence to support their use. He at one point tweeted about astrology being a valuable tool to learn health information from.
So he has a lengthy track record of that kind of dubious statement, to put it mildly. He once even got in trouble with the Food and Drug Administration for suggesting that common brands of apple juice have unsafe levels of arsenic. So, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of concern being expressed in the public health community upon the announcement of this nomination, because he is going to be running this sprawling, massive federal agency that is responsible for millions and millions of Americans’ health care.
Amna Nawaz:
And that sprawling agency means he’s in charge of Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Program, would oversee the health care exchanges.
So what kind of influence could he have on policy?
Lev Facher:
Yes, it’s a fascinating pick, because this is, as you say, a celebrated surgeon and a celebrity, but this is a very bureaucratic agency. This is — it’s both a regulatory agency and essentially an insurance provider.
So he’s going to have immense influence over many of the levers of government when it comes to providing health care. He’s going to be reporting, if both of them are confirmed, to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who would be serving as health secretary. So it’s going to be interesting to see how those two work together. And in some senses, they are aligned. In others, they are not.
Oz at various points has been supportive of vaccines against COVID, against measles, mumps, rubella. So whether there are certain issues that it turns out he’s at odds with the Republican mainstream and the Trump administration, as well as with RFK, that is unknown still.
Amna Nawaz:
So this is an agency that covers more than 150 million Americans. In his nomination, president-elect Trump said that Oz would — quote — “cut waste and fraud within our country’s most expansive government agency” in what some say is a signal that there could be cuts coming possibly to entitlement spending.
Tell us more about what that could look like and who that would impact.
Lev Facher:
Yes, Trump has talked about wanting RFK and Oz as well to go after what he’s calling the illness industrial complex.
And it’s interesting in the context of Mehmet Oz, who has in the past been a big supporter of Medicare Advantage, essentially Medicare plans that are run by private companies. He’s actually supported a near-universalization of coverage for Medicare Advantage, which amounts in one sense to a huge expansion of health coverage for Americans and in another sense that the privatization of one of the biggest safety net health programs we have.
So it remains to be seen what he’s going to do in this agency, which has immense influence over how much doctors are getting paid, what procedures and drugs are covered. They have played a huge role in determining levels for GLP-1 drugs for weight loss like Ozempic, Wegovy.
So he has a lot of power here, and the way the Trump administration asks him to wield it is going to be very fascinating to watch.
Amna Nawaz:
You mentioned the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services. He would be Dr. Oz’s boss if Oz is also confirmed to this position at CMS.
Just step back for a moment and tell us what this says to you, big picture, in terms of these two men being nominated for these positions about this next administration’s approach to the role these agencies should play.
Lev Facher:
Well, to put it very mildly, these are not people who have the approval of the medical and scientific establishment.
People who’ve been working in public health for decades, people in academia who research health and medicine, they are not fans, generally speaking, of RFK and of Dr. Oz, because they have a long track record of putting forth misinformation about vaccines in particular, sowing doubt just about basic public health measures that haven’t historically been contentious.
So, clearly, president-elect Trump is signaling that, even more so in his next administration, he wants to shake up the establishment. He wants to upend the status quo when it comes to public health and just the more basic ways that Americans are provided with health care, access medicine and medical care.
And these two are about as outside the mainstream as you could conceive of for picks to run the health department and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Amna Nawaz:
All right, Lev Facher of STAT News joining us tonight.
Lev, thank you so much.
Lev Facher:
Thanks.