Donald Trump has appointed daytime-TV doctor Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This has raised a lot of questions. Is Oz a real doctor? Does he still have a medical license? Isn’t the once-respected heart surgeon now known primarily as a TV quack and failed Republican Senate candidate?
The answer to all of these questions is, surprisingly, “yes.” But those dubious credentials are not why Trump is putting him in charge of an agency that oversees health-insurance programs covering more than 150 million Americans. Oz’s main qualification is pretending before a live TV audience that Trump had provided convincing evidence that he is in excellent health.
Though this all seems a bit quaint now, when Trump was first running for president back in 2016, people were appalled that he had not released his full medical records as promised. Instead, he put out a four-paragraph letter in which his personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, said he would be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” despite his well-known love of fast food and distaste for exercise.
People did not trust this hyperbolic assessment (which we later learned was dictated by Trump), so that September, Trump had a visit with Oz. The appearance on The Dr. Oz Show was staged as a surreal “made-for-TV” physical, as Vox put it at the time, with “no actual exams, no hands laid on the patient, no verification of the patient’s data.”
Instead, the key moment came when Oz — who Oprah Winfrey had dubbed “America’s doctor” — asked the presidential candidate, “If your health is as strong as it seems … why not share your medical records?”
Trump looked to the audience and said, “Well, I have really no problem doing it. I have it right here. Should I do it? I don’t care. Should I do it?”
Then he dramatically reached into his jacket and produced two pieces of paper, which offered a cursory summary of Trump’s basic health history and a recent physical exam.
This second letter from Bornstein was less ridiculously worded, and it listed Trump’s weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, and other test results. As Wired noted at the time, “What counts politically as ‘medical records’ varies,” and Trump wasn’t the only recent presidential candidate criticized for his lack of health transparency. But it seems unlikely that this second clean bill of health from Bornstein would have been so well received had Oz not given it a glowing on-air interpretation.
Though Oz had ostensibly never seen the letter before, after a brief skim, he pronounced it “pretty comprehensive.” He marveled aloud at each test result, particularly Trump’s testosterone level, drawing a chuckle from the crowd. Oz did not push back when Trump cited waving his hands around during speeches as a form of exercise; when he said he felt as healthy as Tom Brady; or when he asserted that their on-air chat was basically a medical exam. “I view this as, in a way, going to see my doctor,” Trump said.
Afterward, Oz made the media rounds, assuring the American public that Trump was “healthy enough to be president” (though he hadn’t done a real exam), and it was totally appropriate to reveal his medical records on a daytime-TV show.
“I think it’s a very logical thing,” Oz said on the Today show. “Why not release it on a show that talks to people every day about health, and have some context put on the results? You’re not just throwing a bunch of numbers in a newspaper or to a reporter, you’re actually with a doctor who can guide you through what it means.”
This 2016 appearance, which came as Trump was trying to frame Hillary Clinton as too feeble for office, is far from Oz’s only favor to the president-elect. The doctor was a vocal Trump backer and gained his endorsement when he ran for the Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022 (losing to Democrat John Fetterman). And as a fellow TV personality, he fits Trump’s apparent goal of putting a MAGA Dancing With the Stars lineup in charge of the federal government just to show he can.
But what really makes Oz stand out is his willingness to publicly gloss over concerns about Trump’s health and give his dubious medical records a sheen of legitimacy. And, hey, maybe he can do the same for all Americans! We certainly won’t be any healthier with him running CMS. But while a scrupulous doctor might level with us about our failing health-care system, Oz will just say whatever Trump wants us to hear.
