Worst 'Wicked' Tie-In Yet: Trump Wants Dr. Oz In Charge Of Medicare And Medicaid
We'd sooner try defying gravity.
At this point, it’s truly, truly starting to seem as though Donald Trump is just selecting his proposed appointments from a list of people who have been credibly accused of sexual assault, people who are jarringly incompetent at whatever it is at which they are supposed to be competent, or people who have managed to be both of those things at once.
Doctor Mehmet Oz — as far as we know — is only in the second category. Because if you were playing “Family Feud” and the topic was “Snake Oil Salesmen Who Definitely Should Not Be In Charge of Medicare And Medicaid,” he would probably be your very first choice. And you would not be wrong.
But here we are in a land far more bizarre and surreal than the Land of Oz ever hoped to be, and he has actually been nominated to be in charge of these programs. Why? Probably because he was the first doctor that Trump was able to name off the top of his head.
Trump announced the pick in a statement released on Tuesday:
I am very pleased to nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator. America is facing a Healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again. He is an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades. Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.
No, your mind is not failing you, because you did, in fact, just see the words “Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex.”
What does that even mean? Will he get these programs to cover reiki healing? Take apple juice off the market? Will he widely promote selenium to cure cancer? Or endive, red onion, and sea bass as magical foods to prevent ovarian cancer in particular?
Or is it simply that, instead of medicines that actually work, Medicare and Medicaid patients will get lifetime supplies of green coffee bean pills that do literally nothing.
Should you not recall what I’m talking about, please enjoy this video of former Senator Claire McCaskill grilling him on having promoted that and other scammy weight loss products — which I will maintain forever is the best thing she ever did.
Oz, for the record, does not believe that healthcare is a human right, and suggested that instead of having actual health care, poor people could get 15-minute checkups in “festival-like” settings.
He also wants to privatize Medicare, because surely letting some massive corporations skim a bit off the top for literally no reason will really improve things for people who don’t own those corporations or own stock in them.
There really is something especially sinister about putting someone who has made a steady living just scamming the absolute shit out of credulous Americans in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, programs that our most vulnerable citizens, the poor, the disabled, and the elderly, literally rely on in order to live.
They deserve better! Don’t we all!
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
I didn't think it was possible to run completely and utterly out of "What the actual and entire FUCK?" but the whole "Make America Healthy Again" schtick just eviscerated my semantic warehouse.
Jesus Christ on a Pogo Stick, we are so, so screwed.
It’ll be easy - this is an *administrative* post and Oz has no administrative experience. So the whole thing will waste away due to neglect before being sold off to insurance companies for pennies on the dollar.