While Republican Majority Leader Melvin Neufeld turned his back on the challenges facing Kansans every single day, the Kansas Health Policy Authority (KHPA) spent the session looking for solutions.

Today's article in the Overland Park Sun tells the story of how Neufeld and the Republican-led legislature failed to address the skyrocketing costs of health care, and instead passed a series of bills on health care that are unfunded and therefore, meaningless.

This was the year the Kansas Legislature was poised to bring genuine reforms to Kansas’ medical and health insurance system. Advocates of change were left wanting in a session that became bogged down over whether to allow construction of coal-fired electric plants in western Kansas.

This is odd because the Legislature itself launched a major effort last year to make health care more accessible and affordable to Kansans, including the poor.

A bit of background: The Legislature, spurred by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, created an agency called the Kansas Health Policy Authority in 2005. Legislators wanted a single entity to, among other services, provide information and guidance in this costly, complex part of state government.

Ideally, the new organization would be driven by facts, not politics.

Last year, the Legislature enacted a law that required the KHPA to develop a health care agenda for its session this year.

The authority complied. It conducted a “listening tour” across the state in the summer, seeking views of how Kansas’ health care could be upgraded. In November, the KHPA forwarded 21 recommendations to the Legislature and to Sebelius. Know what happened?

An analysis by KHPA shows the Legislature appropriated money for only one of those recommendations, $550,000 for physical fitness and nutrition programs in schools. That is helpful but falls far short of meeting health care challenges in Kansas.

Legislators approved a few more KHPA suggestions but did not fund them. That is window dressing, making it appear the Legislature accomplished something when it did not back the action with funding. Other recommendations were slated for study. That is often used as a dodge to avoid enacting laws.

To read more about how Melvin Neufeld failed the people of Kansas by leading the most ineffective legislative session in 32 years, click here.

To read how long Melvin Neufeld thinks the legislature should wait before going to work on reducing the costs of health care, click here.

To begin work towards kicking Melvin Neufeld and his fellow do-nothing Republicans out of our state legislature, click here.