These are the approved ballot items for November, according to the secretary of state:

• The Taxpayer Bill of Rights: We’ve heard about this one before. The new version going before voters is merely Son of TABOR, with the same bloodline of tax and expenditure limitations.

• Excise taxes: This referendum attacks an unpopular, regressive levy, but is obscured with a coat of greenwash. Coined as “More Green Now,” it tries to give tax policy a social and environmental edge, by extolling the bill’s incentives for saving money and buying hybrid cars.

If the idea were that good, it wouldn’t need an ill-fitting green suit. The referendum is a nuclear option for dealing with the evergreen criticisms about the excise tax, which shouldn’t make its primary color so much green, as Atomic Warning Sign Yellow.

• Pot? Been there, done that, smoked the T-shirt. Maine has had a citizen-initiated medical marijuana initiative on the books for years that’s never really been implemented.

• School consolidation, for which many words and time have been spent trying to convince districts of its worth. Its repeal would cause as many problems as it may solve.

Missing among the items, however, is the one that should have made it: a referendum that included a slew of health insurance reforms, notably the interstate sale of health insurance policies within New England.

That idea, to us, has merit. Other insurances that are both discretionary (like life insurance) and compulsory (like car insurance) are available from vendors across the country. The same should be true of health insurance, under the theory that increased supply could lower prices.

The proposed referendum question was more than that, however. It was an overt attempt to deregulate Maine’s health insurance market, including almost every hot-button issue, such as Dirigo Health’s Savings Offset Payment, guaranteed issue and community rating.

Not everything in it deserved to be heard, discussed or enacted. Undoing Maine’s statutory framework for health insurance in one bill would have been overkill, especially with federal momentum on health care likely to move in an entirely new and unique direction.

Cross-state sales of insurance policies, though, should survive for discussion. Putting health insurance on par with other policies, offered only in neighboring states, could work to reduce insurance costs, without the bureaucratic challenges a true national market could prescribe.

To us, it was the best idea of the bunch from these referenda.

TABOR had its day, and was downed. The excise tax is unpopular, but slashing it would be worse. Marijuana is a niche issue, and school consolidation a wearying battle of attrition. The health insurance bill presented one novel and maybe workable solution to a vexing problem.

But, of course, it didn’t make it.