1 week ago
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The trash pile is getting ever higher. On Thursday, the Senate officially confirmed former heart surgeon, TV talk show host, and snake oil peddler Mehmet Oz to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Oz was confirmed along party lines, by a 53 to 45 vote. He will now manage the federally provided healthcare coverage of around 140 million Americans, including nearly half of all children covered under Medicaid. Given Oz’s track record of chicanery, recent staffing losses at CMS, and the possibility that the Trump administration will soon attempt to enact brutal cuts to Medicaid, the situation is looking dire.
Oz is best known for his years as a daytime TV persona—one bolstered by his first career as a surgeon. Following a long string of appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oz starred in his own health-centered program, the Dr. Oz Show from 2009 to 2022. While his namesake show was well-received, winning several Daytime Emmys, Oz frequently drew controversy for his touting of quack medical treatments and health-related products. In perhaps the most infamous example, Oz praised the weight loss benefits of green coffee bean extract during a show in 2012.
Soon after, a Florida company began advertising their own green coffee bean product and using Oz’s quotes for support. The company, however, also created fake news sites advertising their product along with unsupported claims about its effectiveness—actions that led the Federal Trade Commission to charge the company with false advertising. The company eventually settled with the FTC for millions and Oz appeared before Congress in 2014 to defend his brand of snake oil selling.
While Oz has long been criticized by other doctors for his history of quackery, it was his recent political run for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania that rankled many Americans. Oz was unceremoniously scrubbed from Columbia University’s website in May 2022, ending a 20-year affiliation with the institution. He had officially retired as a professor in 2018. Oz went on to lose his election to John Fetterman (D-Pa).
Though it’s unclear whether Oz’s love of crank medicine will seep into his management of CMS, he’s likely to duly carry out the worst impulses of the Trump administration. He’s been an avowed Republican for decades, and before his Senate run, he served on President Trump’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition in 2018 during Trump’s first term. And there’s little indication that the Trump White House will leave Medicare and Medicaid in good shape.
For instance, the administration has already begun to axe some 300 jobs from CMS as part of its DOGE-led initiative to drastically trim positions across the agencies under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. These job losses are likely to worsen people’s access to healthcare, Democratic lawmakers have argued. GOP politicians have stated that no cuts to Medicare benefits are planned, but their budget plan has called for sweeping cuts that would likely necessitate slashing away Medicaid at the very least. Some GOP-led proposals would likely lead to people being removed from their Medicaid plans altogether.
Oz is only the latest clown to squeeze into the Trump circus car. But his reign as head of CMS is almost certainly to harm some of the most vulnerable Americans among us.
