President-elect Trump said Tuesday he is nominating television personality and doctor Mehmet Oz to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator.
Oz unsuccessfully ran for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022 and has been Trump ally ever since.
“There may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again,” Trump said in a statement, referring to the slogan pioneered by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, his nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
“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. “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.”
Like Kennedy, Oz has no experience running a massive bureaucracy. CMS operates Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the federal Healthcare.gov ObamaCare exchange.
Medicaid covers nearly 80 million low-income people across all 50 states and D.C.