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 right Right combination of technical credentials and conservative bona fides.

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.