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Trump picks former medical school professor Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
After Oz announced his Senate campaign in 2021, Columbia quietly began to scrub Oz from its web pages.
By Judy Goldstein / Senior Staff PhotographerTrump wrote that Oz “will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” whom he nominated as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.By Molly Bordoff and Spencer Davis • November 20, 2024 at 6:31 AM
By Molly Bordoff and Spencer Davis • November 20, 2024 at 6:31 AM
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he will nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz, professor emeritus at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, as the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a federal agency that provides health insurance coverage to more than 160 million Americans.
Oz, a former television host and cardiothoracic surgeon, was previously vice-chairman of the department of surgery at the medical center and co-founder and director of the Cardiovascular Institute and Integrative Medicine Program. Columbia began to quietly disaffiliate itself from Oz after he announced his Senate run in 2021, The Eye reported in November 2022.
If confirmed, Oz will be responsible for overseeing the Affordable Care Act, as well as Medicare and Medicaid.
“He rose to become a Professor of Surgery at Columbia University, while receiving numerous patents on his medical inventions, authoring more than 400 original publications, and publishing numerous New York Times Best Selling books,” Trump wrote in a Tuesday statement about the appointment.
Oz sparked national controversy in 2020 by speaking to the “benefits” of the drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 on Fox News. Oz offered the medical center a donation of 2,070 doses of hydroxychloroquine and $250,000 to fund a study of the drug, but the University eventually declined the effort.
In 2022, Oz unsuccessfully ran for Senate in Pennsylvania with an endorsement from Trump, losing to Democratic Senator John Fetterman. After Oz announced his Senate campaign, the medical center and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons scrubbed Oz from its web pages and directories.
Before his campaign, the University continued to advertise Oz as one of the medical center’s “prominent faculty” on admissions pages. Around a month after announcing his Senate bid, Oz’s title on his “Physician’s Profile” was changed from Director of the Integrative Medicine Center to “Special Lecturer in the Department of Surgery.” As of Wednesday, Oz was listed in the Columbia directory as professor emeritus of surgery.
[Read more: How Do You Solve A Problem Like Mehmet?]
Oz started as a surgeon at the medical center in 1986. During his first decade there, he was listed as an author of hundreds of articles regarding surgical techniques and heart transplants. In 1989, he co-developed a patent application for a new method of welding tissue that has since been abandoned.
In 1994, Oz co-founded the Complementary Care Center alongside registered nurse Gerard Whitworth. The center did not receive University funding and closed in 2000. Oz rebranded it as the Cardiovascular Institute and Integrative Medicine Program. In 2001, Oz was appointed associate professor of surgery at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
While operating the Cardiovascular Institute and Integrative Medicine Program, Oz was the principal investigator on a series of studies that the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleges included the mistreatment of dogs and primates. The University paid a $2,000 settlement to the USDA as a result.
The Integrative Medicine Program disappeared from the list of Vagelos and medical center programs in the University’s annual report in 2007, but Oz continued to appear in media publications as the co-founder and director of the program.
A group of 10 physicians signed a 2015 letter addressed to Lee Goldman, Columbia’s dean of medicine at the time, calling on Columbia to dismiss Oz from the University. The letter claimed that Oz had “repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine.”
Trump said on Thursday that he plans to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which houses the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In the statement announcing his decision to nominate Oz, Trump wrote that Oz “will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”
“I have known Dr. Oz for many years, and I am confident he will fight to ensure everyone in America receives the best possible Healthcare, so our Country can be Great and Healthy Again!” Trump wrote.
Staff Writer Molly Bordoff can be contacted at molly.bordoff@columbiaspectator.com. Follow him on X @mollygbordoff
Staff Writer Spencer Davis can be contacted at spencer.davis@columbiaspectator.com. Follow him on X @spencerdaviis.
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