Dr. Mehmet Oz became a weirdly conservative figure about five years ago. At the start of the pandemic, Oz began appearing on Fox News, advocating for the schools to be reopened, along with everything else, who cares if 1-2% of the population dies. This newfound pro-death fame gave Oz the confidence to try to carpetbag his way to a Senate seat in Pennsylvania by complaining about crudité prices at “Wegners,” a grocery store that doesn’t exist. He also advocated for abortion rights to be determined by women, doctors and… local political leaders. He lost the Senate seat to John Fetterman in 2022. Now he’s back, because Donald Trump saw him on the teevee. Trump is nominating Oz to serve as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Oz’s pro-death stance is going to come in handy.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday said that he would nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz, the author and former television host, to serve as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a powerful agency that oversees health insurance programs covering more than 150 million Americans.

The selection of Dr. Oz, who lost to John Fetterman in 2022 in a race to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate, is likely to be seen as a major surprise, even in a health department that could be led by another unconventional pick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It also continued a trend of Mr. Trump selecting television personalities to oversee federal agencies. His candidates to run the Defense and Transportation Departments have been working for Fox News and Fox Business.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services oversee several of the country’s largest government programs, providing health coverage to more than 150 million Americans. They regulate health insurance and set policy that guides the prices that doctors, hospitals and drug companies are paid for many medical services. About a quarter of all federal spending runs through the centers.

In a statement announcing Dr. Oz as his choice to lead the agency, Mr. Trump said that Dr. Oz would “work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.” Mr. Trump noted that Dr. Oz had “won nine Daytime Emmy Awards hosting ‘The Dr. Oz Show,’ where he taught millions of Americans how to make healthier lifestyle choices.”

Dr. Oz has frequently clashed with medical experts. In the early days of the pandemic, he promoted the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to ward off the coronavirus. A decade ago, he went before a Senate panel and was chastised for selling so-called miracle weight loss pills without substantial proof that they worked.

[From The NY Times]

I forgot about the malaria-drug shilling and the “miracle weight loss pills” mess. The Times notes that Oz obviously has zero experience running a complicated bureaucracy like Medicare. In 2020, Oz did coauthor a Forbes op-ed suggesting that America needs universal health coverage in which non-Medicaid recipients would be automatically enrolled in a private Medicare plan. While Oz will mess with Medicare and Medicaid, the incoming Trump administration is also going to try to completely end Social Security.

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