PROVIDENCE — Health insurers in Rhode Island are getting ready to roll out new insurance plans with lower premiums, but higher deductibles and pared-down coverage.

A bill passed by the General Assembly, and signed by the governor last week, enables small businesses — those with 50 or fewer employees — to sign up for the new, bare-bones plans if they have not offered insurance to their employees in the previous 12 months.

The initiative’s supporters freely admit that this will not be the Rolls-Royce of health insurance, and some people who enroll in the new plans may not be entirely satisfied.

“Something is better than nothing, in my opinion,” said Rep. Steven M. Costantino, D-Providence, chairman of the House Finance Committee and sponsor of the bill that allows the new plans.

“The alternative is to simply let those employees go without insurance,” said David R. Carlin III, vice president for government affairs with the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce and the State House lobbyist for a coalition of 13 chambers of commerce that, together, include 12,500 Rhode Island businesses.

The bill challenges insurers to come up with a plan that costs just $240 a month for an individual, roughly half the cost of a typical employer-sponsored plan.

“It simply cannot be done with a benefit-rich product,” said R. Kelly Sheridan, lobbyist for the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, which requested the bill’s introduction. The insurers “are going to have to get creative,” Sheridan told the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, which heard and approved the bill on the final day of this year’s legislative session.

The new law frees insurers from all state mandates for the purposes of creating the plan, with the exception of mental-health and substance-abuse benefits, which must be covered under the same requirements that apply to all health-insurance plans.

The March of Dimes, the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Society and AARP all opposed the bill, in part because they worried the new plans would skimp on coverage for preventive care and diagnostic testing, and that would lead to fewer people getting diseases diagnosed at early stages when they can be treated easily and less expensively.

But Jason Martiesian, the lobbyist for UnitedHealthcare of New England, predicted that the new plans would cover preventive care. Even United’s high-deductible health plans cover 100 percent of the cost of preventive care — subscribers don’t have to pay out of pocket, even if they haven’t spent their total deductible amount, Martiesian said. “It makes good sense and quite frankly, preventive care is not that expensive,” he said.

Martiesian said it will be a few months before United files its final plan with the state health insurance commissioner’s office for approval. Only then could employers begin to offer the new insurance options.

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, too, is just beginning to develop the plan details, spokeswoman Kim Keough said.

So for now, little is certain about what the new plans will cover. “There are a lot of ways for the insurers to limit their exposure,” said Matthew Stark, policy chief in the office of the state health insurance commissioner. For instance, instead of or in addition to limiting the services covered, insurers might place caps on the total amount they will pay each year, or over a lifetime, for each subscriber. “I don’t know what they’re going to do with this,” Stark said.

One feature will almost certainly be a high deductible, although the law caps the new plans’ deductible at $2,000 for an individual plan and $4,000 for a family plan.

Those who opposed the bill pointed to a study by the Washington, D.C.-based Employee Benefit Research Institute that found just 37 percent of people with a high-deductible health plan — defined as anything over $1,000 for an individual plan or $2,000 for a family plan — reported being extremely or very satisfied with their health insurance, compared with 67 percent of people with comprehensive coverage.

The bill’s supporters claim that’s not a fair comparison because the people who enroll in the new plans will be those who are uninsured — currently about 120,000 people statewide — rather than people who have comprehensive coverage.

“Right now, if you have no insurance, you’re not getting any primary care,” said Laurie White, president of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. “You’re not getting any diagnostic testing. You’re not getting any laboratory testing. You’re avoiding any kind of medical care.”

Letting people stay uninsured “increases the costs to hospitals,” said Carlin. “That increases the costs to the Medicaid system and the federal government. That’s to nobody’s benefit.”

A survey this spring by the Greater Providence chamber found that among members who did not offer health insurance for their employees, premium cost was the most-often cited reason for not offering the benefit, and 62 percent of those companies said their failure to offer insurance hurt their ability to attract and retain qualified workers.

The survey outlined the plan parameters in Costantino’s bill and asked companies if they would be “incentivized” to offer it if such a low-cost plan were available; 73 percent said yes, and 62 percent said they thought their employees would enroll in such a plan.

Even if the plans turn out not to be popular among employers or employees, the state will be no worse off, said Costantino. “At least it gives them an option now that they didn’t have before.”

The new law contains a sunset clause so it will automatically be repealed on Dec. 31, 2010, and insurers will no longer be able to sell the so-called “basic benefit” plans, unless the legislature acts to extend the law.

Karmen Hanson, who tracks states’ health-insurance laws for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said about a dozen states have enacted something like this, but Rhode Island is unique in limiting enrollment to companies that have not offered health insurance for a year.

The provision was designed to keep employers that offer comprehensive coverage from downgrading to the new, cheaper plans. But Paul Fronstein, director of the health research and education program at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, said he worries that the provision will engender resentment among employers who already offer insurance and will still be stuck paying the old, higher premium rates.

“We’re helping people that have been doing nothing,” Fronstein said. “Are we helping the people who have been struggling to do something?”

egudrais@projo.com