Trump picks Marty Makary, Jay Bhattacharya will disrupt our health agencies to save lives

The public-health establishment and left-wing media are rushing to discredit President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to lead health agencies. The New York Times smears them as “outside the medical mainstream.”Circling the wagons, Dr.Paul Offit, an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration, lamely observes, “What they’re saying when they make these appointments is that we don’t trust the people who are there.”You bet.Trump and the public have every reason to distrust the current agency heads, after the repeated blunders, deceptions and coverups during COVID-19.

Trump is appointing disruptors with the courage to challenge the status quo.Like Dr.Marty Makary, nominated to head the Food and Drug Administration.Makary’s credentials will make it impossible for the Senate to reject him. A Johns Hopkins surgeon and professor of public health, Makary was voted into the prestigious National Academy of Medicine, a Hall of Fame for doctors.More importantly, if you’re in the hospital, you want Makary on your side.Two decades ago, he declared war against the epidemic of medical errors killing as many as 100,000 patients a year.

Errors like patients being given the wrong dose of a medication, or a surgeon operating on the wrong body part, or a lethal germ invading the patients’ body to cause an infection.The medical establishment was hush-hush about them.But not Makary. He argued for surgeons always taking a “time out” in the OR to look for errors.

He pioneered doctors using checklists like pilots do to ensure protocols are followed.My organization, the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, considers Makary a hero.In 2017, Makary went to bat for patients saddled with unfair medical debt.Even nonprofit hospitals were suing patients, garnishing wages and taking their homes.In many cases, hospitals charged patients several times more than what insurance companies charged for the same procedures.

Makary called for an end to it.When COVID struck, Ma...