Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Trump administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief, got called out for going on television to warn about medical fraud.
According to Salon’s Heather Digby Parton, Oz “had the chutzpah to go on TV and talk about medical fraud” this week, telling viewers, “These charlatans are shockingly effective at being grifters. We have normalized fraud. We have normalized stealing from the poor.”
The columnist doesn’t dispute the substance of Oz’s warning — she even agrees fraud has been normalized — but argues the Trump nominee is an odd messenger to be delivering it, given his own history.
Before entering government, Oz built his public profile as a daytime television personality, promoting a long list of dubious health remedies and diet products. Parton brands him a “snake oil salesman” who made his reputation “on afternoon television,” boosted by Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement.
That reputation followed him to Capitol Hill. In 2014, Oz was called to testify before Congress about the bogus cures he had promoted, an episode critics still cite when questioning his credibility on medical fraud.
Now Oz oversees CMS, the federal agency responsible for administering Medicare and Medicaid, two programs that serve tens of millions of low-income, elderly and disabled Americans.
Parton argues that placing someone with Oz’s history in that role, while he publicly complains about “stealing from the poor,” is itself evidence of the very problem he described.
“He’s right about that, actually,” Parton wrote, “and his presence in the president’s Cabinet proves it.”
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