What should politicians do to make health insurance less expensive and more accessible? The simple answer is that they should do the opposite of what they’ve been doing.

In New Hampshire, that would mean creating a regulatory environment that would encourage more insurers to compete for customers on price and options. Senators will vote Wednesday on another bill to do that.

New Hampshire continues to suffer from Jeanne Shaheen’s 1994 community rating law, which restricted the ability of insurers to adjust rates based on a person’s actual level of risk. As a direct result of that law, 21 health insurers stopped doing business in New Hampshire. We are still trying to find ways to bring them back.

There is little hope for now that community rating will be undone. With most insurers unwilling to come here because of that misguided law, Senate Bill 150 would try a different fix: let Granite Staters go to the insurers.

The bill would allow New Hampshire residents to buy health insurance from out-of-state insurers. To get around our bad insurance laws, the bill would exempt those insurers from having to comply with the state’s coverage mandates. Were it to pass, a Granite Stater or a New Hampshire company with fewer than 100 employees could buy insurance from a provider in, say, Michigan, Utah or Wyoming, all of which have fewer mandated benefits than New Hampshire does — or from Vermont or Maine, both of which have slightly lower average costs for family health insurance coverage.

The House already passed a bill earlier this month to remove some benefit mandates. SB 150 would take us another step toward making insurance more affordable by stimulating competition among providers.