Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz poses for a portrait outside a polling place during the primary election on May 17, 2022 in Rockledge, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Hannah Beer | Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he will nominate popular TV host and former US Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator
CMS operates or oversees programs that provide health coverage to about 1 in 2 Americans, including Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Programand the Obamacare Marketplace Exchange Healthcare.gov.
These four programs account for $1.6 trillion, or about 25%, of spending. Federal budgetwhich Trump highlighted when he announced Oz was his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump said last week that he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, to be HHS secretary.
Oz previously hosted “The Dr. Oz Show,” a syndicated daytime television program for more than a dozen years. He was the Republican candidate for the US Senate seat from Pennsylvania in 2022, losing to Democrat Senator John Fetterman.
“America is facing a health care crisis, and there is no doctor more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday.
“He is an eminent physician, heart surgeon, inventor, and world-class communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades, and all the dreaded chronic diseases left in his wake.
“Our broken health care system hurts everyday Americans, and crushes our nation’s budget,” Trump said.
“Dr. Oz will be a leader in promoting disease prevention, so we get the best outcomes in the world for every dollar spent on health care in our great country,” Trump said. “He will also reduce waste and fraud within our nation’s most expensive government agency, which accounts for a third of our nation’s health care spending, and a quarter of our entire national budget.”
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure is the current CMS administrator.
Oz has a dual American and Turkish citizenshipBorn in Turkey. During his Senate campaign, he pledged to renounce his Turkish citizenship if elected.
Trump has been a staunch critic of Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act is informally known, and during his first year in the White House tried — and failed — to get Congress to repeal the law, which many Provides subsidies to people who purchase individual health. Insurance coverage.
