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President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Dr. Mehmet Oz selected as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a key federal agency that oversees the health insurance policies of more than 150 million Americans.

“I know Dr. Oz for many years, and I am confident he will fight to ensure everyone in America gets the best health care possible so our country can be great and healthy again!” Trump said this in a statement on Tuesday. “Dr. Oz will be a leader in driving disease prevention so that we achieve the best outcomes in the world for every dollar we spend on health care in our great country.”

Trump, who is also trying to cut spending in the federal government and has long had Medicaid in mind for cuts, also promised that Oz would take a scalpel to the massive agency.

“He will also reduce waste and fraud within our nation’s most expensive government agency, which represents a third of our nation’s health care spending and a quarter of our entire national budget,” the president-elect said in his statement.

Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon and television personality, unsuccessfully ran for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022 with Trump’s support. He lost to the Democratic now-senator. Johannes Fetterman.

In 2018, Trump appointed Oz to the Presidential Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, and reappointed him to the position in 2020.

Oz rose to fame as a frequent guest of Oprah Winfrey and eventually launched his own daytime TV talk show in 2009. Thanks to ‘The Dr. Oz Show,” which won several daytime Emmy awards and reached millions of viewers, Oz became one of the country’s best-known doctors.

However, his views on Covid-19 sparked controversy. For example, early in the pandemic, Oz talked about the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a way to treat the coronavirus — despite the lack of solid scientific evidence that it was an effective treatment. Many of those perspectives were praised by Republicans at the time.

Before running for Senate, Oz expressed support for Obamacare, CNN’s KFile reported in 2022, although his then-campaign spokesman refuted those positions and said Oz would not have voted for the landmark health care reform law .

Still, Oz’s past support for the Affordable Care Act stands in stark contrast to Trump’s views on the law, which he promised to repeal and replace during his first presidential campaign. Although Trump now says he will not try to repeal Obamacare, he has repeatedly said he would replace it with a better plan — although the president-elect has not provided details on such a policy.

If confirmed, Oz would be responsible for overseeing the Affordable Care Act exchanges, which have enrolled more than 20 million people in 2024 — a record — between the federal and state-run marketplaces. During Trump’s first term, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pulled back on marketing and enrollment support and shortened the enrollment period, leading to a decline in the number of people covered.

Oz would also control two major federal health programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which cover tens of millions of older Americans and low-income residents, respectively.

Oz has long expressed support for Medicare Advantage, a fast-growing program under which the federal government pays private insurers to provide coverage to seniors and disabled Americans. The Biden administration has made several changes to the program in recent years to address criticism that insurers are being paid too much. Insurers claim the payments are not enough to cover their medical costs, and some have limited the number of plans they offer in the program.

The CMS administrator is expected to play a key role in the second Trump administration as Republicans are expected to propose changes to Medicaid, which they have tried to restrict in the past. In addition, White House and Republican Party lawmakers will have to decide what to do next year with the increased Obamacare premium subsidies that are set to expire at the end of 2025.

Oz has also held other views that do not conform to traditional Republican orthodoxy. As a doctor, for example, Oz advocated for everyone in America to have insurance — a position held by progressives including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who has long pushed for Medicare for All. Oz has said the government should provide health care to Americans who cannot afford it. “It should be mandatory that everyone in America have health care coverage. If you can’t afford it, we should give it to you,” Oz told The Seattle Times in 2009.

Oz, an advocate of alternative medicines and treatments, has been trolled by the medical community for years. In 2015, a group of doctors at Columbia University wrote that they were “dismayed” that Oz was a member of the school’s faculty. And in 2014, Oz was berated by senators during a congressional hearing over his promotion of weight-loss products on his television show.

Oliver Darcy contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional information.