Former GOP Legislator Magstadt Swiftly Fills Vacuum Atop DOH

While Governor Kristi Noem has apparently been dragging her feet on filling government vacancies since summer, she replaced her Health Secretary in three days. After receiving Joan Adam’s resignation on Monday, Noem yesterday announced she is appointing former Republican legislator, current nurse and businesswoman, and Watertown-area neighbor Melissa Magstadt to run the Department of Health starting Tuesday:

Melissa is an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (ARPN). She is a co-owner of Quick Care SD, an organization that provides quick and affordable healthcare access across Eastern South Dakota. She also owns an integrated medicine practice called SG Essentials in both Watertown and Pierre. Melissa served in the South Dakota House of Representatives from 2011 to 2014 and was a member of the House Committee on Health and Human Services. She has been involved in South Dakota healthcare for more than 30 years.

…Melissa has a Master’s in Science from South Dakota State University with a focus as a family nurse practitioner. She also has a Master’s in Business Administration from Mount Marty University. She is a graduate of the Great Plains Public Health Leadership Institute at the University of Nebraska. And she is a fellow at the University of Arizona’s Center for Integrated Medicine [Office of the Governor, press release, 2022.12.22].

The swiftness of this appointment suggests the Governor was not taken by surprise by Adam’s Monday departure and had a succession plan in mind.

Quick Care SD looks like a legitimate health care practice with two walk-in clinics in Watertown, one in Huron, and one in Brookings. Quick Care has even offered house calls. SG Essentials looks more like a beauty spa focused on skin care, cosmetic procedures, and subcutaneous testosterone and estradiol treatments to boost your sex drive (though that benefit is not headlined, because, hey, no sex, please, we’re South Dakotan).

As a legislator, Magstadt voted for South Dakota’s draconian and misogynist 72-hour waiting period for abortions (that was eleven years before the Alito Court allowed South Dakota to impose its fuller draconian and misogynist near-total ban on abortion last summer). Magstadt supported further oppression of women’s right to control their bodies in 2013. In 2012, Magstadt proved herself a gun nut and a good soldier, supporting a weakening of gun laws but then upholding Governor Dennis Daugaard’s veto thereof. Magstadt opposed a 2013 bill that sought to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous people who’ve been involuntarily committed for mental illness. And Magstadt was part of the gutless and incurious committee that voted to sweep the entire EB-5 scandal under the rug by blaming what little corruption they were willing to acknowledge on her conveniently dead Watertown neighbor Richard Benda.

Magstadt is thus an experienced health care provider, but she’s also a typical SDGOP machine politician, ready to put the culture war above health and public safety.

Related Health Review: The Quick Care Watertown FB page indicates that Magstadt’s clinic regularly promoted covid testing for travelers, but there’s very little mention of covid vaccines. Magstadt helped establish a health hotline to provide information about coronavirus to Codington County residents in April 2020. Magstadt’s team did appear to mask up at the office, but staff appeared to have no problem modeling the opposite of social distancing, without masks, at a wedding dance in August 2020.