Ambition abounds, but modest changes are more likely. That's one conclusion from a Kansas City Star article (registration required) on health care policy reform in Kansas:

Lawmakers left Topeka last spring vowing that 2008 would be the year they attacked Kansas’ health-care woes.

They directed a state health panel to craft solutions to address the rising cost of health care, which has burdened businesses and sent many consumers into the ranks of the uninsured. There was talk about bold public-private partnerships, universal health care and mandated insurance coverage for children and young adults.

Now, political reality has sunk in.

Gone are aggressive recommendations to require insurance. Gone are ideas to privatize government coverage programs. Gone too are big proposals to offer more government help to the poor and uninsured.

In their place are more modest ideas designed to tweak the existing system rather than reinvent it.

The Kansas Health Policy Authority recently compiled its recommendations, which will soon be presented to the legislature.

So what's in the plan?

• A mandate that children have insurance (in certain conditions).
• Encourage better insurance rates for small businesses through a series of technical insurance changes.
• Extend an existing insurance premium subsidy to more childless adults.
• Standardize insurance cards.

The Flint Hills Center for Public Policy is keeping watch, as is Ken Daniels, publisher of KSSmallBiz.com. Daniels says of the KHPA staff: "I don't promise they will EVER fall in line with our small business ideas, but I promise they are listening. And, I think I can promise they will present our ideas to the Legislature even if they don't embrace them."