Donald Trump has named Mehmet Oz, best known worldwide as Dr. Oz, nominated to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

“Our broken health care system is harming everyday Americans and crushing our nation’s budget,” Trump wrote in his announcement of Oz’s nomination.

“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 healthcare in our great country. 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.”

Trump emphasized that he plans to have Oz work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr., his nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, “to take on the disease-industrial complex, and all the terrible chronic diseases that are remain in its wake.”

Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist who entered the 2024 presidential race as an independent candidate and adopted the slogan “make America healthy again,” an offshoot of Trump’s “make America great again.”

The combination of Kennedy and Oz in leading health care policy roles will face significant pushback from health care organizations. Oz’s role does not require Senate confirmation, while Kennedy’s does.

Oz previously praised Kennedy’s appointment, saying, “Americans need better research on healthy lifestyle choices from unbiased scientists, and @RobertKennedyJr can help as HHS Secretary.” Oz’s most recent post on X promotes a multivitamin and supplement store.

The move comes after Oz ran for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022, losing to John Fetterman but securing Trump’s support.

Fetterman said of Oz’s nomination: “Well, I’ve been very, very clear if Dr. Oz agrees to protect and preserve Medicaid and Medicare, I’m absolutely going to vote for the guy,” according to news station Notus.

Before running for Senate, Oz was the eponymous host of the Dr. Oz Show and a frequent guest on Oprah Winfrey’s show, where he often provided medical advice. He is a cardiothoracic surgeon who earlier in his career co-founded a cardiac care center and taught at Columbia University. Like Trump, he gained national attention through reality television.

His advice has proven so controversial that a 2014 British Medical Journal investigation declared half of it “unfounded or wrong.” A year later, in 2015, a significant group of physicians wrote a letter to Columbia’s medical dean, criticizing the school’s collaboration with him, calling it “unacceptable.”

Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Oz promoted malaria drugs, including hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus, in an appearance on Fox News, calling the discredited treatments a “gamechanger.” His comments about the drug caught Trump’s attention, CNN reported at the time.