It’s apparent to about anyone monitoring the actions of Kansas state government right now that political posturing is getting in the way of good public policy.

A clear and disturbing example of that trend came last week when House Republicans stepped in to reject Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ executive order to reorganize and streamline the state’s medical programs. The order was a straightforward plan to move three programs that reimburse doctors, hospitals and clinics for care to needy Kansans from the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services into the Department of Administration where they could be combined with health insurance programs for state employees. The result would be increased efficiency and a larger bargaining unit that might be able to push for lower health care costs.

Although the governor’s plan had been shopped around the state for months and had been presented without opposition to the House Appropriations Committee in early February, Republican House members decided to release their own version of the plan Tuesday, a day before the vote on the governor’s order. The House plan was aimed at all the same goals as the governor’s plan except it would create a new Health Policy Authority with seven voting members to oversee the programs Sebelius wanted to turn over to the Department of Administration.

Rather than trimming bureaucracy by collapsing administrative tasks, the Republicans want to create added bureaucracy. And these people call themselves conservatives?

The most disturbing part of this chapter, however, is the politics behind it. House Republicans contended they only turned down the governor’s plan because they wanted to make it better. The fact of the matter is that they had ample opportunity to work with the governor’s plan as it was going through committee or when it was being shared with the 100 health care groups across the state that supported it. They even could have let the executive order take effect — as it would have on July 1 without legislative intervention — then dealt with any deficiencies they saw. But instead they let the plan go to the floor of the House where they could take a slap at the governor by voting it down.

The raw politics of this move was noted by a obviously irritated Dennis McKinney, House minority leader, in remarks to a group of Kansas editors on Thursday. “We saw it as nothing but an attempt to one-up the governor.”

House Majority Leader Clay Aurand, appearing at the same editors’ meeting, seemed to confirm that take. Although Aurand insisted that Republicans were trying to craft a measure that would have broader support, he also revealed the political backdrop to the debate by saying he couldn’t remember any time when he agreed with so much of what was being said by his colleagues in support of a measure that “I knew I was going to vote against.” The Republicans had made up their minds; this order was going down. It was defeated by a 77-44 vote — that’s 77 Republicans against and 41 Democrats and three maverick Republicans in favor.

To be fair, state legislators aren’t the only ones who can play this game. Gov. Sebelius is no political lightweight and certainly is capable of playing hard ball on issues to gain political advantage. But in this case, it seems Kansans are the losers because the Republican House majority wasn’t willing to negotiate in good faith. They had ample opportunity to work with the governor on this measure before it came to the floor but chose to skip that opportunity in favor of trying to make her look bad.

This consolidation of state health care services is a good idea that was brought to the table by Sebelius. Hopefully, the powers that be in Topeka can put aside the political posturing long enough to figure out a way to put some version of the plan into action.