In the closing days of the session, the Legislature will be voting on important legislation to guarantee that the Dirigo health program is adequately financed.

Unfortunately, this bill, LD 1935, has come under unceasing attack from the insurance industry and its allies, and for a very simple reason: They do not want to carry out their responsibilities under the law, and they want the taxpayers to bail them out.

In an expensive, no-holds-barred campaign, insurers have charged that the financing mechanism of Dirigo is “controversial,” that LD 1935 is a “simplistic political fix,” and that they have come up with a better plan. Further, they are telling people to call their legislators to support a “compromise” on financing Dirigo, even though there isn’t a shred of public information available on what this “compromise” might be.

First, we should consider how we got here. While health care is indeed a complex subject, the financing of Dirigo is straightforward. The state is supposed to come up with cost-containment strategies and a statewide health care plan, and it has done this. Health care providers are supposed to work to create efficiencies and hold down their charges, and they have done this too. Finally, under a lengthy trial-like proceeding, designed in part by the insurance companies themselves, the superintendent of insurance is supposed to determine whether the calculated savings are supported by evidence. The answer: $43.7 million in savings in Dirigo’s first year.

Insurers were then supposed to go to work, negotiating payment schedules with providers to reflect the savings already achieved under Dirigo. They have never done this. From day one, they have insisted that the superintendent’s findings are wrong.

If there is any controversy here, it is because insurers have created it themselves. The public just wants Dirigo to work, but insurers are trying to make sure it doesn’t, even while claiming that they “support the goals” of Dirigo.

Reforming health care is hard work, as everyone who has attempted it knows. And it’s understandable that insurers would prefer to simply pad their bills than negotiate for the savings that have, under the law, already been achieved.

Instead of being honest with the public, the insurers have added a charge to monthly bills to reflect the savings offset payment (SOP) they are obligated for, and say they have subtracted savings they’ve achieved – without proving that they have indeed been subtracted from your bill.

It is this kind of shell game that has led to the need for LD 1935, which requires insurers not to pass on the SOP to customers – what they should have been doing all along.

Instead of complying, insurers and their allies have filed numerous lawsuits not to pay the SOP for 2006. And, for good measure, they are also suing over the 2007 process. It appears they support Dirigo health when other people are doing the work, but refuse to cooperate whenever it requires them to do something themselves. Now they are asking the public to support a “compromise” on the SOP that no one has seen. That’s because it’s being negotiated, behind closed doors, at the State House, talks that have been going on for weeks.

This latest campaign is outrageous. Asking for support for a proposal that has never been made public is like saying “trust me” when there is no basis for trust. The insurers have done everything they can to distract people from the insurers’ failure to follow the law, and to fulfill their legal responsibilities.

So let’s be clear about what a “compromise” would mean. It would mean that insurers would no longer have to find the savings from Dirigo, and that instead taxpayers would have to pay extra to keep the Dirigo program afloat.

This is exactly the situation the original Dirigo legislation was designed to guard against. There is no need for an “alternative financing mechanism,” which means a taxpayer-funded bailout, because the existing mechanism is working just the way it was supposed to. That the industry does not like the results is no reason to scrap it.

The truth is that there is plenty of money already in the health care system. Insurers are awash in profits, and have been building up their reserves at a rapid pace. What they are trying to convince the public is that insurance costs must go up at an ever-accelerating pace, and that they themselves have no responsibility for it.

The insurance industry’s arguments do not appear to have anything to do with the truth. They are solely designed to further the industry’s interests, and not that of health care providers, consumers or the public as a whole.

We shouldn’t be fooled. Enacting LD 1935 is not only necessary, but it will bring honesty back into the important and continuing debate over health care reform.

Joe Ditr?, Esq., serves as the executive director of Consumers for Affordable Health Care, Maine’s largest consumer health coalition (www.mainecahc.org).