Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) opened the door on Tuesday to supporting ex-rival Mehmet Oz as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator.
“If Dr. Oz is about protecting and preserving Medicare and Medicaid, I’m voting for the dude,” Fetterman said in a post on the social platform X.
President-elect Trump on Tuesday announced Oz as his pick for CMS administrator, a Senate-confirmed position.
“Dr. Oz will be a leader in incentivizing Disease Prevention, so we get the best results in the World for every dollar we spend on Healthcare in our Great Country,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday.
“He will also cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget,” he added.
In the 2022 midterms, Oz and Fetterman battled for former Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R-Pa.) old seat, with the latter coming out victorious. During the campaign, Fetterman mocked Oz on multiple occasions, most notably over comments from the doctor calling “crudité” expensive.
Both Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Oz have a history of promoting unfounded medical claims.
Kennedy has already faced blowback from Democrats as Trump’s HHS secretary pick, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) saying that with the former independent presidential candidate ascending to the head of the agency, “we would be talking about going back to the, what, the 1700s, 1800s.”
The Hill has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment.