Dr. Mehmet Oz made a particularly useless comment Friday, after being sworn in as Donald Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“It is your patriotic duty, I’ll say it again, the patriotic duty of all Americans to take care of themselves because it is important for serving in the military, but it is also important because healthy people don’t consume health care resources,” Oz said during a ceremony at the White House.
“The best way to reduce drug spending is to use less drugs ’cause you don’t need them, ’cause you’re healthy. And it feels a lot better, as well.”
Oz’s suggestion that Americans stay healthy is so simple, it might just be work—oh wait, no!
The health care programs that Oz now oversees provide coverage for about half of the U.S. population. During his confirmation hearing, Oz refused to say that he would oppose cuts to Medicaid that Trump and Republicans are intending to force through in order to fund an extension on the president’s 2017 tax plan.
Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order promising to lower drug prices, but in fact handed a huge win to pharmaceutical companies, which will be permitted to set their own drug prices for an additional four years before they can be reduced as part of Medicare’s negotiation program.
Behind Oz stood Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of health and human services, who is spearheading the administration’s efforts to “Make America Healthy Again”—and folding his crusade against conventional medicine into the government’s health recommendations.