Early last November, during a White House press event to announce a Trump administration deal with pharmaceutical companies to cut the prices of weight-loss shots, a drug company executive fainted in the Oval Office. Fortunately, there was a doctor in the house. Doctor Mehmet Oz, whom Donald Trump had appointed to run Medicare and Medicaid, rushed to help the man, supporting him and lowering his head to the floor. It wasn’t the first such incident. Dr. Oz’s own granddaughter fainted during his swearing-in ceremony in April last year. Again, he knew just what to do.
Oz is a rare public figure in that he both is a doctor and he plays one on TV. He fits squarely into an administration run by a former reality TV star. In Trump’s wider political sphere, Dr. Phil McGraw goes on ICE raids, Kim Kardashian issues pleas for executive clemency, Judge Jeanine prosecutes the Chairman of the Fed, Nicki Minaj appears at the United Nations and Kid Rock testifies before Congress about concert-ticket price extortion. But only Oz, among all Trump-favored celebrities, holds an actual job in the administration.
He comes from an elite medical background. Born in Ohio in 1960 to Turkish immigrant parents, Oz holds dual citizenship in the US and Turkey. His father was a thoracic surgeon in Delaware. Oz graduated from Harvard University with a degree in biology in 1982, and a joint MD/MBA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986.
After a brief stint in the Turkish army, he undertook a medical residency at New York-Presbyterian Medical Center, specializing in heart surgery, and then became an attending surgeon. He pioneered cardiac surgery techniques and has made contributions to devices such as the MitraClip, and advocated for integrating alternative medicine (such as hypnosis, meditation and acupuncture) into patient care.
Meanwhile, Oz became famous, frequently appearing as a medical expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which led to his own syndicated daytime health and wellness program, The Dr. Oz Show, which ran from 2009 to 2022. He won nine Daytime Emmy Awards and put his name on a series of bestselling lifestyle and alternative-medicine books. His TV career was not without controversy. Former Missouri senator Claire McCaskill publicly criticized him for promoting something called bean coffee bean extract, which Oz claimed was a “magic weight loss cure for every body type.” Oz ended up paying $5.25 million in a false advertising settlement.
Science writer Bill Gifford, who appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, was moderate in his criticism in a New York Times piece, saying: “Some are quick to prescribe medications, whereas Oz tends to favor less interventionist, more natural approaches based on diet and exercise.” Sounds very proto-MAHA. But Oz would have just been the answer to a daytime-TV trivia question alongside Judge Judy if politics hadn’t intervened.
Dr. Oz fits squarely into an administration run by a former reality TV star
Sometime in the last decade, Oz outed himself as a “conservative Republican,” making him persona non grata among non-conservative non-Republicans. When he guest-hosted a week of Jeopardy! in 2021 following the death of longtime host Alex Trebek the year before, more than 500 hyper-woke Jeopardy! contestants signed an open letter claiming that Oz “stands in opposition to everything that Jeopardy! stands for,” citing his promotion of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, to treat Covid and public statements he’d made about vaccines and autism.
Oz clearly wasn’t listening to the opinions of former game-show contestants when he launched his doomed campaign in the Pennsylvania Senate race against John Fetterman in 2022. Fetterman made an absolute fool of Oz, drawing fresh attention to old animal experiments that he had reportedly conducted before his TV career during medical research – including “puppygate,” Oz’s alleged euthanization of an entire litter of puppies. Fetterman’s campaign posted a photo of Oz with a dog and the caption “Has anyone seen this dog since May?”
That was a bit of dirty pool, but more apropos was Fetterman pointing out that Oz had actually been a longtime resident of New Jersey, hiring Snooki from Jersey Shore to troll him and flying a plane over Jersey Shore beaches bearing the banner “Hey Dr. Oz, welcome home to NJ! John.” Oz responded with a video clip where he said: “I came home [to Pennsylvania] a year ago – it feels good to be back.” It was the kind of self-own that typified his campaign.
But nothing topped Oz’s “crudité” video, in which he pretended to shop for a vegetable platter, including raw asparagus, at a Redner’s grocery store, which he called “Wegner’s.” He said, awkwardly, “This doesn’t include the tequila,” seemingly unaware that you can’t buy liquor at Pennsylvania grocery stores.
Yet there Oz was, disarming Republicans and Democrats alike during his 2025 confirmation hearings to run Medicare and Medicaid, receiving praise from the Washington Post for his energetic and effective management style and, of course, saving lives at the White House. Then, late last month, Oz posted a video from Van Nuys, California, in the Los Angeles area, which he called the “epicenter” of American Medicare fraud. He claimed that there were 42 hospices in a four-block radius, and alleged more than $3.5 billion in hospice/home care fraud, much of it run, he said, by the “Russian-Armenian mafia.” The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom responded by accusing Oz of “baseless and racially charged allegations” against Armenian-Americans. He also posted an AI-generated image of Oz as Austin Powers, with the caption: “Sold fake ‘miracle pills’ to dying grandmas.”
In return, Oz has sent Newsom’s office a document requesting data about state health service budget inflation and other indicators of fraud, and what he calls a “comprehensive program integrity action plan.” Suddenly, the TV doctor has shown some bureaucratic teeth. A spokesman for Newsom said: “We will respond as appropriate, but nothing he says is worth our time… we don’t take Dr. Oz seriously.” Many people, inside and outside government, feel the same way. But the doctor always seems to win.
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