A former heart surgeon and celebrity doctor has been chosen to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) – the healthcare service for millions of disadvantaged Americans.
Mehmet Oz, 64, was confirmed for the position by the Republican-controlled Senate as part of a shake-up of the healthcare system. He will manage health insurance programs for roughly half the country, with oversight of Medicare, Medicaid or Affordable Care Act coverage.
His appointment comes as the Trump administration considers making cuts to the Medicaid program, which provides coverage to millions of poor and disabled Americans.
Oz told senators in March that he favored work requirements for Medicaid recipients, but said that paperwork was not vital in reaffirming worker status or to block people from staying enrolled.
“We have to make some important decisions to improve the quality of care,” he said at the time.
Oz grew to notable fame through hosting The Dr Oz Show, offering, at times, controversial health advice to viewers from 2009 to 2022. This included suggesting that malaria drugs were an effective cure for Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic.
The Colombia University heart surgeon also praised the recent boom in weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy to combat obesity in America –in contrast to the view of his new boss Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has previously said the drugs are scam.
Recently, Oz hosted the health secretary and his inner circle regularly at his home in Florida. And he has leaned into Kennedy's campaign to “Make America Healthy Again," an effort to redesign the nation’s food supply, reject vaccine mandates and cast doubt on some long-established scientific research.
Oz is yet to declare whether he is opposed to speculated cuts to the government-funded program.
On Tuesday, thousands of staffers at the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes for Health were laid off.
The CMS is expected to lose about 300 staffers in the wake of this weeks’ cuts.
The Independent contacted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for comment.
