PROVIDENCE – Gov. Donald L. Carcieri and Lt. Gov. Elizabeth H. Roberts have come out strongly against a decision by the House Finance Committee to eliminate the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner.

In a statement yesterday, Carcieri called on the General Assembly to restore the office’s $700,000 budget. “I cannot fathom how the General Assembly would propose abolishing the Office of Health Commissioner as part of their budget plan,” he said.

The governor praised the current commissioner, Christopher F. Koller, who is in the midst of a public battle with the state’s three leading insurers – Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, United HealthCare of New England, and Tufts Health Plan – over the double-digit increases in premium rates they plan to seek next year.

Koller has called on the insurers to withdraw the proposed rate increases and has said that if they do not he will begin formal rate hearings in mid-July. However, Koller’s office would disappear on July 1 under the House Finance Committee’s $7.8 billion budget plan. Its duties would be returned to the R.I. Department of Business Regulation.

Calling on the insurers to reverse course “was the right action for Commissioner Koller to take in protecting consumers from unwarranted and unnecessary rate hikes,” Carcieri said, noting that Rhode Islanders are dealing with “extraordinarily challenging economic times.”

Carcieri appointed Koller, the former CEO of Neighborhood Health Plan, as the state’s first health insurance commissioner in 2005.

Roberts, for her part, worked on the legislation that created the office in 2004 when she was still a state senator. The lieutenant governor has scheduled a press conference for this afternoon with a group of business leaders who oppose the elimination of the commissioner’s office.

Separately, the Rhode Island chapter of the Smaller Business Association of New England (SBANE) also called on lawmakers to protect the health insurance commissioner’s office.

“Without the efforts of [the commissioner’s office] and Commissioner Christopher Koller, Rhode Island small business owners would no longer have a leader in government looking out for their best health insurance interests,” Philip M. Papoojian, chairman of the SBANE chapter’s government affairs committee, said in a statement.

“If this office is eliminated, Rhode Island will take a giant leap backward,” Papoojian said. “Consumer and provider protections will be abandoned, canceling out the very reason this office was created.”

The full House is scheduled to vote on the budget tomorrow, with Senate consideration to follow. Although Carcieri has criticized the House Finance Committee budget, he has not explicitly threatened to veto it.