Trump hands responsibility for Medicare to television Dr. Oz, defender of pseudoscience like faith healing

Newly elected President Donald Trump has continued his series of appointments. Thus, this Tuesday it was announced that Dr. Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr. Oz in his television programs, will be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which provides services for the elderly and low-income people. There are health social assistance programs.

“The United States is facing a health care crisis and there may be no doctor more qualified and capable of making America healthy again than Dr. Oz,” the president-elect said in a statement about the controversial surgeon. Advocated various pseudosciences.

Among others, he is a defender of alternative medicine, faith healing, and various paranormal beliefs, a position which has caused him to face criticism from several medical publications.

According to Trump, Oz is “a distinguished physician, cardiac surgeon, inventor and world-class communicator who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades.”

Oz will team up with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former presidential candidate known for his vaccine conspiracy theories, who was named as the future health secretary last week.

In the statement, Trump, who won the election on Nov. 5 and will take over as president on Jan. 20, said the health care system is “broken,” “hurting ordinary Americans and crushing the nation’s budget.” “.

Oz, he said, would thus dedicate himself to reducing “waste” and “fraud” within “the most expensive government agency” in the United States, which accounts for “between a third and a quarter” of the nation’s health care spending. ” represents. National Budget, he assured.

The son of Turkish immigrants, Oz grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

He began his television career on the Discovery Channel series ‘Second Opinion with Dr. Oz’ and was a regular guest on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show.’

In 2009 he created ‘The Dr. Oz Show’, a daily television program on medical and health topics, which ran for 13 seasons.

Oz recently attempted to jump into politics and ran in the 2022 US Senate election in Pennsylvania.

He lost the race to John Fetterman, even though Trump had publicly shown his support for him.

Linda McMahon, former wrestling executive, Secretary of Education

Trump also announced this Tuesday the appointment of Linda McMahon, a former executive of the wrestling company World Wrestling Entertainment, who was already part of his first administration, as Secretary of Education.

Through a statement, the Republican confirmed that McMahon, 76, will be in charge of leading the department, despite having experience in education at the local level, as a member of the Connecticut State Board of Education.

As education secretary, the incoming president said in a statement, “she will fight tirelessly to expand school choice in every state in the country and empower parents to make the best educational decisions for their families. ”

He said, “Linda will use her decades of leadership experience and deep knowledge of both education and business to empower the next generation of American students and workers and make the United States number one in education in the world.”

McMahon was in charge of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. She was appointed in 2017 and resigned in 2019 to become chair of America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC.

The future Secretary of Education, along with her husband Vince McMahon, founded WWE, an American media and entertainment company primarily integrated in the field of professional wrestling.

By 2009, the former executive oversaw its transformation from a small wrestling entertainment company into a publicly traded media empire.

McMahon twice ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate from Connecticut in 2010 and 2012.