There’s an effort afoot to completely rewrite Maine’s regulation of health insurance.

Five bills will be discussed today before the Insurance and Financial Services Committee. The most comprehensive, L.D. 1496, brings together a number of conservative policy prescriptions for lowering health-care costs into one bill. While the intention of the legislation is noble – lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage – it’s unlikely that the bill will achieve its goals, while the chances of doing real harm to the state are great.

L.D. 1496 essentially deregulates health insurance. It repeals guaranteed issuance and community rating laws that don’t allow insurance companies to drop sick clients or charge widely fluctuating premiums. Older patients, women of childbearing age and people with chronic conditions could be denied coverage altogether or charged premiums out of line with what their neighbors pay.

The bill would also create a high-risk insurance pool. The pool would be designed to cover individuals who are denied coverage by private insurance companies and would be subsidized by the federal and state government. Experience in other states with such pools shows limited success. Enrollment rates are low, costs are high and the plans tend to attract only the sickest of the sick. Reports from Washington state show that, because of high premiums, only one in every seven of those eligible signs up. The number of enrollees is only about 2,800.

The pools have not reduced the number of uninsured or expanded care. Maine experimented with high-risk pools from 1988 until 1994 and never had more than 500 participants.

The legislation would also remove mandates on insurance coverage, such as mental health parity, minimum maternity stays and prostate cancer screenings.

It would cap the noneconomic damages on malpractice awards at $250,000, a favorite Republican idea that would have little effect on overall health-care costs and only act to protect bad doctors from juries that have found them negligent.

The bill would also change state tax laws to make contributions to health savings accounts deductible, change the certificate of need process for hospitals and increase the reimbursement rate for MaineCare services. The other four bills – L.D. 1475, L.D. 394, L.D. 1168 and L.D. 898 – cover small portions of the larger bill.

The proposed bills would move Maine in the wrong direction on health care, undermine important consumer protections and do little to control costs. They don’t deserve support.