Mehmet Oz unqualified to run Medicare and Medicaid

The nomination of Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services would be a shocking nomination under normal circumstances. But in the context of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s, nomination to lead HHS, the CMS parent agency, it makes perfect sense: It’s as if Donald Trump is poised to turn over control of our vital health and medical agencies to a clown car full of unqualified quacks.

Dr. Oz is famous for promoting medicines and supplements that do not do what Oz says they do—that’s the last person you’d want overseeing the billions of dollars in medical care expenditures CMS approves each year. Like RFK, Jr., he touted the debunked hydroxychloroquine “treatment” for COVID-19. He has devoted a large portion of his career to promoting silly therapies involving herbs and extracts with no discernable health effects, various other purported weight-loss remedies, and has even promoted homeopathy, in which supposed therapies are diluted to the point that they are essentially absent from the product. At this rate, they should rename the department the Department of Hydroxychloroquine, Homeopathy, and Supplements.

We’re surprised Dr. Oz is willing to seek an office that requires Senate confirmation given how badly his last appearance before the United States Senate went. But a confirmation hearing he must have. As with Kennedy, it would be wholly inappropriate to ram through the Oz nomination during a fake, unscheduled recess.