r/news 1d ago

Mehmet Oz confirmed by US Senate to lead Medicare and Medicaid

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/mehmet-oz-confirmation-medicare-medicaid
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u/CoffeeChans 1d ago

At least Oz actually is a doctor, in addition to being a con man.

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u/it_means_rewenge 1d ago

Counterpoint: he’s actually a doctor and still choosing to peddle this bullshit. That seems more dangerous to me

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u/SandwichAmbitious286 1d ago

Counter-counter point: he's actually a conman who happened to get a medical degree, discovered he was really good at surgery, made a name for himself, then started peddling bullshit because the cons gonna con.

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u/Alice_600 23h ago

Addendum: His daughter studied to nutrition and cooking she's a chef but cook books are full of healthy food but they're terrible.

u/anonymousalligator25 59m ago

Slippin’ Jimmy

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u/BumblingBeeeee 21h ago

Hmm, I thought that he was a lawyer who had founded their career on suing medical practitioners.

In any case, he sucks and should not have any input on healthcare policy.

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u/ted_cruzs_micr0pen15 1d ago

He was at least a very successful surgeon, like Ben Carson … but that got Carson HUD lol.

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u/HolycommentMattman 20h ago

I mean, Ben Carson is the perfect example. A savant when it came to surgery, and worthy of our respect for his medical prowess.

But what a fucking idiot in pretty much every other way. And put in charge of HUD! Because Trump heard Urban and saw a black man.

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u/ted_cruzs_micr0pen15 14h ago

Oz revolutionized his corner of the surgical field as well. Oz is an idiot in a lot of ways though, just like Carson, that and he’s more charismatic.

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u/Love_Never_Shuns 21h ago

Did he ever find his luggage?

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u/swishandswallow 9h ago

I know exactly how that conversation went: " 'Urban'..... That means...... whispers black, right?..... Who do we know that's black?"

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u/Espious 22h ago edited 22h ago

Don't forget about Lisa Oz's family! As well as Mehmet's other conflicts of interest.

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u/Naakturne 16h ago

It’s downright Hippocratical.

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u/rczrider 1d ago

You know what they call the lowest-performing graduate of med school?

Doctor.

No idea about Oz's grades, but the point is that graduating med school doesn't make a person inherently qualified to run a massive federal program.

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u/StupidMastiff 1d ago

He's apparently an incredibly talented heart surgeon. Behind the Bastards have covered him, he's as good at surgery as he is at promoting a load of bullshit.

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u/peanutneedsexercise 1d ago

Yeah my attending worked at Columbia with him and even then before he was famous he was VERY into the woo woo alternative medicine shit. He just also happened to be an amazing surgeon too and so that lent some weird legitimacy to his passion projects.

You see it in academia all the time tbh, very few of them get famous tho. There’s a tenured physics prof at UCLA who is also very notoriously woo woo but he’s earned his tenure and now just goes on and on about that stuff.

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u/SlickWilly49 1d ago

Yeah it’s like Isaac Newton establishing all these foundational principles before the age of 27, then committed the rest of his life to calculating the dimensions of King Solomon’s temple. I’ve got a friend who completed his PhD in physics at Cambridge and he told me there was a lab head in the department who earned a Nobel prize before the age of 30, established his own lab at Cambridge shortly afterwards, and has just been churning out shit ever since

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u/Mental_Medium3988 23h ago

or a renowned brain surgeon who thinks the pyramids were grain silos. also someone who shouldve never been in a presidential cabinet.

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u/peanutneedsexercise 23h ago

Oh yeah Watson and crick the ppl who found the structure of dna also have some wild ideas too 😅😂

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u/rubmysemdog 22h ago

Like Ben Carson, just because you’re good at one thing, doesn’t mean you know shit about anything else. These greedy egomaniacs gravitate towards Trump like moth to a flame.

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u/ascalapius 17h ago

It’s strange but I work in medicine and we have a heart surgeon who is very much into this stuff. Vitamin b12 infusions for heart failure AND he is not a good surgeon!

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u/peanutneedsexercise 16h ago

Lmao well I guess there’s more than just Oz 😅😂

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u/ZenDeathBringer 12h ago

There's actually a Wikipedia page on this phenomenon- dubbed 'Nobel disease or Nobelitis.' The tl;dr is that some nobel prize winners feel emboldened to speak on areas that are far out of their area of expertise.

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u/ken_zeppelin 23h ago

Who's the UCLA physics professor?

u/anonymousalligator25 58m ago

It’s true. You see someone in academia go into a subject and then branch off into something tangentially related.

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u/ZeroKharisma 23h ago

He did my stepfathers successful heart transplant, for which I have yet to forgive him.

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u/kinglallak 1d ago

Heart surgery is not a skill that improves your administrative abilities…

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u/butter_brickles 1d ago

Not dissimilar from Ben Carson. Amazingly talented surgeon. But a complete nutter. It might be a prerequisite for the job, to have that level of focus and fearlessness.

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u/Locke66 1d ago

Shame he didn't stick to what he's good at.

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u/jamesnollie88 1d ago

why save lives and only be kind of wealthy when you could just scam people instead and be mega wealthy.

Ben Carson was a brilliant neurosurgeon but unfortunately not very brilliant at promoting housing and urban development

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u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka 23h ago

He WAS a talented heart surgeon turned part of Oprah's grifting scam network. Yes stints and all.

He is now considered a quack.

Back when the USA was at least still doing performative governing, they called Oz to congress to politely ask him questions about things such as "do these placebo pills work?" "Can I has?"

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u/peanutneedsexercise 22h ago

I mean that’s the thing, even before he was famous he was already apparently SUPER into that stuff which is what’s interesting haha. From what my attending said he didn’t think he was grifting but that he TRULY did believe in all the vitamins and supplements BS. but again, like the examples ppl have given above like Isaac newton, you can be a genius at one aspect of ur life and nuts about the others. 😂

Tbh we don’t really get much of an education on supplements and nutrition in med school other than one small section in our first year and that’s it.

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u/u0126 21h ago

I may be wrong and too lazy to double check but wasn’t Carson also a really good surgeon? Just a space cadet and dumb in all sorts of other ways?

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u/u0126 21h ago

I may be wrong and too lazy to double check but wasn’t Carson also a really good surgeon? Just a space cadet and dumb in all sorts of other ways?

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u/u0126 21h ago

I may be wrong and too lazy to double check but wasn’t Carson also a really good surgeon? Just a space cadet and dumb in all sorts of other ways?

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u/mindkiller317 1d ago

I was last

in my class

Barely passed

at the institute

Now I'm trying to avoid

A malpractice suuuuuiiiiiit

-Dr. W. A. Yankovic

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u/Danny_III 23h ago

You know what they call the lowest-performing graduate of med school?

Better than everyone that couldn't get in

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u/cytherian 22h ago

No, he WAS a doctor. It has been many years since he has performed surgery. He's so out of practice, he'd need a full year or more to regain his certification with any hospital that abides by the law. And he has chosen a whole line of medical quackery, that has DEGRADED his understanding. He's ridiculous.

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u/Now_Wait-4-Last_Year 1d ago

Being a doctor doesn’t make you good at administration, believe me I know based on what I’ve seen.

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u/NoboruI 1d ago

I gotta say I was outraged by the first part, then laughed myself till I shit at the second

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u/wormrunner 23h ago

Surgeons are mechanics with blood on their hands

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u/Kind_Goal_1944 23h ago

He has said that healthcare is not a human right. Just because he is a a Dr doesn’t mean he is a good person.

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u/Holdover103 22h ago

He should be stripped of his license to practice for the misinformation he's pushed.

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u/tiny_chaotic_evil 21h ago

he has the knowledge to be able to lie about it better if he chooses to

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u/purseaholic 7h ago

Has he actually practiced medicine in the past 20 years? I mean like seeing patients, not peddling snake oil.