Shady wizard of Oz: Who is Trump’s newest pick for health care, Turkish-American Dr. Mehmet Oz?

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named Turkish-American Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service. Oz is a controversial pick to lead anything health-related as his history is littered with disputes over his medical claims. However, his ties with the former president will now see the TV star handling a powerful agency that oversees the health care of millions of Americans.

So, just what does Oz stand for in health issues and simply who is he?

Oz has been involved in political issues almost as long as he has been on TV and has been a much-discussed — beloved and hated — figure for even longer perhaps. Although a talented heart surgeon, the public persona Oz has created for himself has not always aligned with scientific principles in the eyes of his peers. He has garnered much criticism for his embrace of pseudoscience, including on the topics of alternative medicine, faith healing and various paranormal beliefs.

The political journey of the Turkish-American celebrity heart surgeon has been a bumpy one. His attempts to jump-start his political career in 2022 were met with failure as he lost in his bid for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, running for the Republican Party and with the endorsement of Trump.

How was Oz ever in a position to lose a political race in the first place? Let’s rewind a couple of decades.

Turkish-American roots

Mehmet Oz was born in 1960 to Suna and Mustafa Oz, a Turkish couple who had moved from Türkiye’s Konya to Cleveland, Ohio. His father Mustafa was also a doctor, and a surgeon to be precise. Mustafa graduated at the top of his class from Istanbul’s Cerrahpasa Medical School in 1950, before he and his wife, Suna, moved to the United States.

Oz and his sisters grew up in a mixed environment, where his father’s family practiced more traditional Islam, while his mother’s family was more secular.

His Turkish descent would go on to play an important part in his career and would be used against him from time to time, particularly by his political opponents. Oz even served in the Turkish military in order to keep his dual citizenship, a citizenship that he said he would forsake if he won the Pennsylvania Senate seat. Whether he intends to follow suit with that promise if he is confirmed to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service come January, remains to be seen.

A heart surgeon to begin with

Oz began his medical career at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City in 1986. Nearly a decade later, he went on to co-found the Cardiac Complementary Care Center, providing alternative medicine to heart disease patients which put Oz on the radar of the public and caused tensions with hospital administration.

Oz stopped employing the therapeutic touch, a pseudoscientific energy therapy that practitioners claim promotes healing, after the hospital strongly objected to its use. High-profile operations and successful surgeries brought even more media attention to Oz.

By the end of the 1990s, Oz was “loving” the media buzz.

Mehmet Oz: A television star

Oz played his cards well in the television sector, which saw him become a regular on Oprah Winfrey’s show. Over five seasons Oz appeared 55 times on the show as a health expert. In the end, Winfrey offered him his own show: “The Dr. Oz Show.” The show premiered in 2009 and went on to become an immense success for the doctor.

Throughout the 2010s, Oz and his show frequently made headlines due to the host’s unconventional approach to medicine and health advice. Oz received much backlash for many of the claims and statements he made on the show. He garnered a large female viewership and would address a wide range of topics from diabetes to even true crime stories. The show also featured segments with celebrity interviews.

Oz hosted the program for 13 seasons until 2022, and the show received nine Daytime Emmy Awards during its run.

Wizard of supplements

For over a decade, Oz was embroiled in numerous controversies due to his medical claims and advice on “The Dr. Oz Show,” mostly because of his affinity for alternative medicine.

“No other show on television can top ‘The Dr. Oz Show’ for the sheer magnitude of bad health advice it consistently offers,” was one review, and over a third of the claims made on the show were deemed to lack “believable” evidence according to a study by the British Medical Journal in 2014.

One of the most headline-grabbing issues that Oz brought forward was that of supplements and products, particularly related to weight loss. Oz would describe these products, which ranged from flowers to coffee beans and pills, as “magical” but scientific evidence behind their efficacy was lacking or in some cases nonexistent.

Such was the fame of Oz that a simple mention of one of these products on his show could make their sales skyrocket, a phenomenon that even had its own name: “The Dr. Oz Effect.”

The controversies eventually landed Oz in a Senate hearing on consumer fraud in diet product advertising, in 2014.

Mehmet Oz and Conservatives

In 2016, Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, appeared on “The Dr. Oz Show,” and it was perhaps an indication of where Oz wanted to pivot his career in the future: Politics.

That interview was an apparent success as two years later, Trump appointed Oz to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, a government organization that aims to promote “programs and initiatives that motivate people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities to lead active, healthy lives.”

Oz held that position until 2022 when President Joe Biden removed him.

In 2021, Oz announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, a move that saw his show get removed from a number of TV stations. Although there was a divide among Republicans on whether he was the right candidate, he won the Republican primary, backed by the endorsement of Trump. If elected he would have become the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Oz lost the Senate race in 2022, to Democratic nominee John Fetterman, by a margin of 4.9%.

‘Make America Healthy Again’

Trump’s return to the White House, means a second chance for Mehmet Oz, but again there are doubts. Trump said that Oz would look to cut waste and fraud, working alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CMS.

Although Oz identifies as a “conservative Republican,” his position on key issues has not always been consistent with the views of the conservative base over the years.

From promoting wearing masks and getting vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic to pointing out the threats of climate change and then changing his stance on the risks of carbon dioxide emissions during his Senate campaign, Oz’s political stances have drawn criticism from his Republican supporters and have gone unnoticed by his Democratic rivals.

Perhaps one of the most significant aspects of his current political position is health care. Oz supported a government-backed health care system during Barack Obama’s presidency.

“It should be mandatory that everybody in America have health care coverage. If you can’t afford it, we have to give it to you,” he said and even appeared in an advertisement that promoted the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, something that the Republicans strongly opposed. However, during his Senate run, Oz reverted to his stance and said that he would appeal the Affordable Care Act if he were elected to the Senate.

Now, if confirmed by the Senate, it remains to be seen which version of Oz will shape policies affecting the health care of millions of Americans.