Dr. Oz, tapped to run Medicare, has a record of promoting health misinformation

“America’s doctor” could soon have an even bigger hand in shaping health care in the United States.

On Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz, a longtime TV personality, to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a powerful role that would give him control over a more than $1 trillion budget and influence over drug price negotiations, medication coverage decisions, the Affordable Care Act and more.

Oz, a heart surgeon by training, first gained fame with appearances on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” where Winfrey referred to him as “America’s doctor,” and shot to stardom with the debut of his own daytime program, “The Dr. Oz Show,” in 2009. On and off the screen, he has used his influence as one of the nation’s most recognizable doctors to champion healthy habits like a nutritious diet. But he has also sown misinformation — about COVID treatments, weight loss hacks and unproven supplements. He has invested in drug companies, even as he has publicly taken aim at Big Pharma, and has profited from a medical device that he helped invent but that has been subject to several recalls.

Over roughly two decades in the public eye, Oz has drawn the ire of medical experts, members of Congress and even his own peers, including a group of 10 doctors who called for him to be fired from a faculty position at Columbia University, arguing he had shown a “disdain for science.” (The university appeared to quietly cut its public ties with the physician in 2022.)

Oz did not respond to a request for comment.

His nomination has alarmed some doctors and those who work in public health. “I just don’t know what side of Dr. Oz we’re going to see,” said Dr. Pieter Cohen, a physician and associate professor at Harvard Medical School who studies supplements. “I hope we see the meticulous cardiothoracic surgeon, and I hope we don’t see the promoter of unproven botanicals.”

Here are five key areas of Oz’s track record on health.

Weight loss

Oz has a long history of promoting dubious weight loss products, including raspberry ketones, garcinia cambogia and green coffee bean extract, frequently extolling their “magic” or “miracle” ability to help people drop pounds. Many of these claims lack evidence or have been proved false.

In 2014, a Senate subcommittee grilled Oz about his endorsements of weight loss products, with then-Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., telling him that “the scientific community is almost monolithic against you in terms of the efficacy of a few products that you have called miracles.”

He admitted before that panel that his claims often “don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact.” A few months later, the researchers behind a green coffee bean extract study Oz featured on his show retracted the paper. And in 2018, Oz reached a $5.25 million deal in a lawsuit that accused him of exaggerating the benefits of weight loss supplements.

Some of his advice is more grounded in evidence: Oz has promoted exercise and diets that focus on lean proteins, fiber and healthy fats, and he has suggested staying away from soft drinks.

He has also hailed the advent of drugs like Ozempic for weight loss. In a 2021 segment on his show, Oz lugged a cinder block around the set to illustrate the average amount of weight patients lost in a clinical trial. He has cautioned that there is not data on the long-term effects of these medications yet but has also expressed excitement over the wide range of conditions the drugs are being studied for, such as alcohol use disorder.

His views may become especially relevant if he ends up at the helm of Medicare, which does not cover medications strictly for weight loss. Medicaid coverage for obesity drugs varies state by state.

COVID-19

Early in the pandemic, Oz offered the public tips to avoid getting sick and devoted time on his show to demonstrating how to wear a mask without fogging up one’s glasses.

But he also heavily promoted the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine early on. He was in contact with advisers to Trump about accelerating the approval to use hydroxychloroquine against the coronavirus. At the time, the drugs had not been substantially tested against the virus. Scientists soon found those treatments were ineffective against it, and came with significant risks, including heart issues.

Oz posted a video of himself receiving the first dose of a COVID vaccine in January 2021 and said he “didn’t hesitate” to get the shot. But he has since criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations that young people get booster shots.

He has pushed for a greater emphasis on treatments such as monoclonal antibody infusions, instead of focusing on vaccination.

During his run for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022, Oz also seized on conservative ire over lockdowns and pandemic restrictions. “It’s not a healthy way to live!” he said in one TikTok video.

Routine vaccinations

As the leader of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Oz would have oversight over the insurance marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act as well as programs offering low-cost health coverage and free vaccines to children.

He has alternately encouraged people to get vaccinated while also questioning certain vaccines and their schedules. “He has some attitudes that are strange and internally conflicting,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who appeared on Oz’s show in 2021 to discuss COVID vaccines.

In 2010, Oz told television host Joy Behar that his children had not gotten flu or swine flu shots, and said that he spread out his children’s vaccines instead of following the immunization schedule widely recommended by medical experts.

In 2019, Oz endorsed the MMR vaccine, which is primarily given in childhood to protect against measles, mumps and rubella, on his show. Researchers found that people were more likely to view the vaccine as low risk after watching the episode than before.

But he has criticized vaccine mandates, particularly for COVID-19 shots. In 2022, he told The Washington Examiner that he would block private companies from mandating “invasive procedures, which a vaccine is,” he said.

Supplements

In a 2014 episode of “The Dr. Oz Show,” the camera panned over a table with a tincture, some tea and a bottle of supplements.

“They were once considered fringe therapies,” Oz said. “Now, they’ve gone mainstream.”

He pointed to coenzyme Q10, a popular diet supplement, as a remedy for high blood pressure and suggested viewers try Valerian root to treat anxiety. There is some evidence to suggest that coenzyme Q10 might help reduce systolic blood pressure in certain patients, but experts have said more research is needed. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has said there’s not enough evidence to show that Valerian root is helpful for anxiety.

Cohen appeared on the show several times more than a decade ago to discuss the health risks of taking untested supplements. He said he stopped making appearances after Oz started encouraging treatments that were not based on evidence.

“It was unfortunate, because his show started with such good advice and then it veered into misinformation,” Cohen said.

In recent years, Oz has continued to recommend supplements on his popular social media channels. In a May Instagram post, for example, he promoted nootropics — which include dietary supplements like fish oil — as a potential way to “maximize your brainpower so you can improve learning and productivity.” There isn’t robust evidence to support such a claim.

In 2023, Oz announced that he had become a “global adviser and stakeholder” of iHerb, an online supplement store. He has shared his own personal supplement regimen on its website, listing products like ashwagandha, a staple of Ayurvedic medicine. Oz said in the post that he took the supplement for thyroid health, but the Cleveland Clinic has cautioned that the product can exacerbate existing thyroid problems.

Ties to drug and device makers

During his Senate run, Oz said that he had “taken on Big Pharma” and had “scars to prove it.”

“I cannot be bought,” he added.

But his own history and financial disclosures from that run show that he has had financial ties to a number of medical companies.

One of these involves a medical device called MitraClip, which was designed to treat leaky heart valves and offered an alternative to open-heart surgery. A patent related to the device, initially developed by Silicon Valley startup Evalve, lists Oz first among the inventors, according to a report this year on MitraClip by nonprofit news site KFF Health News.

The Food and Drug Administration approved MitraClip in 2013. The agency had hesitations about the product’s effectiveness and the caliber of the research behind it, KFF Health News found, but chose to approve it for a narrow group of patients. Since then, versions of the device have been the subject of three recalls, according to the FDA. The agency has also received thousands of reports about malfunctions or patient injuries, including hundreds of deaths, that were potentially related to the device.

Oz’s financial disclosures from his Senate run show that he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in MitraClip royalties from Abbott Laboratories, which acquired Evalve in 2009. In addition, the disclosures showed that he and his wife owned shares in a number of pharmaceutical companies, including, at one point, AbbVie; Johnson &Johnson; Thermo Fisher Scientific, a supplier of lab equipment, instruments and chemicals, including hydroxychloroquine; and CVS Health Corp.

Oz also listed holdings worth millions of dollars in Numilk, the maker of a plant-based alternative to milk; Prelude, a network of fertility clinics; and PanTheryx, a company specializing in products made with bovine colostrum. Because he is no longer a Senate candidate, more recent disclosures are not available. But nominees for federal positions must also submit financial disclosures to be confirmed.

“The financial ties need to be investigated fully,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, a consumer health advocacy organization that has supported the Affordable Care Act and pushed to broaden health care access and coverage.

The incoming leader of CMS will have a hand in the next chapter of negotiations over Medicare prescription drug prices as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act approved under President Joe Biden. Among the first round of discounts announced this year were some for drugs manufactured by AbbVie and Johnson &Johnson.

The negotiating authority is “one of the main levers that the administration will have to try to provide real relief for people” on drug prices, Wright said.

“We want to make sure that when those negotiations on drug prices happen, that pharma is not on both sides of the negotiating table,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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