Donald Trump has appointed daytime-TV doctor Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This has raised a lot of questions. Is Oz a real doctor? Does he still have a medical license? Isn’t the once-respected heart surgeon now known primarily as a TV quack and failed Republican Senate candidate?

The answer to all of these questions is, surprisingly, “yes.” But those dubious credentials are not why Trump is putting him in charge of an agency that oversees health-insurance programs covering more than 150 million Americans. Oz’s main qualification is pretending before a live TV audience that Trump had provided convincing evidence that he is in excellent health.

Though this all seems a bit quaint now, when Trump was first running for president back in 2016, people were appalled that he had not released his full medical records as promised. Instead, he put out a four-paragraph letter in which his personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, said he would be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” despite his well-known love of fast food and distaste for exercise.

People........

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