Missouri’s welfare agency has a new leader. Deborah Scott is a 20 year state employee who’s worked for the departments of education and health, and for the last five years at the department of social services. She moves up from deputy director to lead more than eight-thousand employees who handle welfare, child protection, and other programs. She says she supports the governor’s plan to overhaul medicaid…entirely. Blunt says this is a critical time for the Department. The legislature has voted to kill the medicaid program in two years. Blunt says Scott and her department will have to take the lead in creating a new, innovative, and financially sustainable medicaid program. Scott says it’s too soon to say if any of the 90-thousand people cut from medicaid last year should be reistated. She says the agency works hard to catch medicaid providers who cheat but she says the legislature needs to pass a new law on provider fraud. The House has refused to accept a proposal approved earlier this year by the state senate.