Wisconsin Health Department Gets Another Manager Connected To Heritage Foundation
Scott Walker has named Karen McKeown, a nurse and Heritage Foundation graduate fellow, to run the Wisconsin Department of Health Services' Division of Health.
One of McKeown's papers is here - - where she lays out the flaws in recent Congressionally-approved health-care reforms, demerits in a sometimes "ruthless" British public medical system and advantages of free-market solutions, including walk-in clinics at Wal-Mart and CVS.
Here are the titles (bold-facing in the original text) to her proposed reforms to health-care services in the US:
Reform #1: Focus patient interest on cost by promoting a free market for health coverage.
Reform #2: Expand patient knowledge through a free market clearinghouse of information.
Reform #3: Improve physician comfort with patient empowerment.The Wisconsin health services department manages programs for seniors, the disabled and low-income citizens - - and so far Walker made those programs ideological targets marked by cuts and politicized game-playing.
Little wonder then that Walker and Dennis Smith, the former Heritage Foundation fellow and Obama-basher now running the Department have tapped another ideologue to the lineup.
Interesting, too, that Walker and Smith were content to leave the state health division position vacant for a year.
Maybe It took that long to find the
Maybe leaving that position unfilled was actually the better public health decision.
Final thought:
McKeown is taking a job that, like all state positions, comes with a Cadillac-level public-sector health insurance plan heavily-subsidized by taxpayers.
I continue to be fascinated by so-called small-government conservatives like Lt. Gov. Kleefisch, the afore-mentioned Walker, Smith, McKeown, and the far-right Wisconsin legislative cohort who all talk up the free market but take big-government salaries and benefits, and enjoy the Wisconsin employees' health-care system.
Doesn't that put them in contradiction with one of McKeown's principles, as she wrote:
The first step to empowering individuals is therefore to involve them more directly in choosing their own health care plan.[125] This would require both federal tax and federal and state regulatory reform.
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