Who is Dr Mehmet Oz, Donald Trump's choice for a key health job overseeing Medicare?

Dr Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon and well-known talk show host, has been picked by President-elect Donald Trump to run the United States' governmental health insurance programmes.

Trump said Oz would run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a government agency that regulates the health system and provides health coverage to more than 145 million Americans.

Medicare is a US insurance programme primarily for adults aged 65 and older while Medicaid covers medical costs for people with low incomes.

The agency also includes children’s insurance through Medicaid as well as the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. The act provides federal and state-level marketplaces to buy insurance for those who do not get coverage through their employer.

"America is facing a Healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr Oz to Make America Healthy Again," Trump said in a statement about the nomination.

Who is Dr Mehmet Oz?

Oz is a heart surgeon who previously ran the New York Presbyterian Medical Center's cardiovascular institute.

He was educated at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and currently remains a professor emeritus of surgery at Columbia University, according to the school's directory.

He became well known in the US as a featured guest on "The Oprah Winfrey Show” in the 2000s.

Oz then launched his television programme called "The Dr. Oz Show" in 2009, which he hosted for 13 years. He won nine Daytime Emmy awards for the show.

He is also the author of eight bestselling books on everything from dieting to having a baby.

When did Oz first run for political office?

Oz ran for the US Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022. He narrowly won the Republican party's primary, with Trump endorsing him.

Trump praised Oz as "popular, respected, and smart," adding that he had known the talk show host for many years.

The celebrity host went on to lose the Senate race to Democratic candidate John Fetterman.

Oz's opponent in the 2022 Republican primary, David McCormick, eventually won a Senate seat in Pennsylvania for the party in the recent November 2024 election.

Why is Oz a controversial pick for Trump?

Oz has previously come under fire for health advice or supplement endorsements provided on his long-running TV show.

A 2014 observational study published in the British Medical Journal looked at the health advice given during 40 episodes of the show and found there was contradictory evidence for 15 per cent of recommendations and no evidence to support 39 per cent of them.

The authors also said that the most common advice on the show was dietary.

Oz testified the same year at a Senate hearing on diet scams, with lawmakers on a Consumer Protection Panel criticising his use of the word "miracle" to describe some pills. Senators urged the host to use his "power" responsibly.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Oz also touted using the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus despite a lack of research.

A French doctor, Didier Raoult, who pushed for the drug's use was recently ordered to stop practising medicine for two years in the country.

Oz would run a large agency under the Department of Health and Human Services, for which Trump picked vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr to run.