Wolf picks heads of Human Services, Health, Drugs/Alcohol and Physician General

Saying a priority is to expand Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians, Gov.-elect Tom Wolf on Saturday named two cabinet members with experience expanding coverage under President Obama's Affordable Care Act.

Wolf reached south of the border to tap Theodore "Ted" Dallas, currently the secretary of the Maryland Department of Human Resources, to be his secretary of human services.

The agency serves the most vulnerable by providing cash aid, home-heating help and health care for the poor, foster care and adoption services, child abuse protection, and support for the aging and people with intellectual disabilities.

Maryland opted for Medicaid expansion, while Pennsylvania did not.

Karen Murphy, whom Wolf named secretary of health, is a nurse who now works out of the Baltimore area and leads an ACA program.

Dallas and Murphy were among four top officials Wolf's team named Saturday. Gary Tennis, secretary for the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, will remain in his position. And Wolf named Rachel Levine, a professor at the Penn State College of Medicine, as his Physician General.

Announcements on heads for the Department of Education and the Department of Labor and Industry are expected Monday. Department secretaries face Senate confirmation.

Dallas is Wolf's second appointee from the administration of Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat who finishes two terms Wednesday. Last week, Wolf named Maryland's state police chief, Marcus L. Brown, to head Pennsylvania's state police.

As key officials to implement Wolf's plans for Medicaid expansion, Dallas and Murphy join Teresa Miller, named last week to lead the Insurance Department. Like Murphy, Miller also worked for Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services in a separate branch that was helping to set up health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.

Critics had said that Gov. Corbett's alternative to Medicaid expansion, Healthy PA, had placed limits on coverage for the most vulnerable, while Corbett argued the expansion was too costly.

"As my administration works to fix the myriad problems that exist with the current system, I need the Department of Human Services to be run efficiently and effectively," said Wolf, lauding Dallas.

In 2013, Dallas and Maryland's Human Resources Department, which handles Medicaid in that state, settled a suit that claimed it sometimes took a year for the department to approve applications for Medicaid coverage as waiting patients got sicker.

At the time, Dallas said that his office was taking measures to reduce the backlog and that the system would improve under the ACA.

Several appointees have Philadelphia ties. Dallas earned degrees in political science and economics at the University of Pennsylvania and a master's in business administration from Temple.

Murphy, who had been chief executive of the Moses Taylor Health System in Scranton, earned a doctorate in business administration from Temple.

Tennis earned a law degree from Penn and once led the legislation unit in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.

Levine is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine and vice chair for Clinical Affairs for the Department of Pediatrics and Chief of the Division of Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders at the Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.