Along with insurance industry interests, the biggest supporters of the bill to deregulate pricing on all home and auto insurance in South Carolina are politically conservative lawmakers.

Known as the Property and Casualty Insurance Personal Lines Modernization Act, the bill would eventually give insurance companies carte blanche to set their own prices on billions of dollars worth of premiums in the state and, in the view of critics, strictly limit the power of consumer advocates to serve as a watchdog over the industry.

The bill is based on model legislation developed by pro-industry groups such as the National Council of Insurance Legislators and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

"This bill is a call for complete deregulation. It's on a very fast track, and it's absolutely on the wish list of every insurance company in the country," said Hana Williamson, an attorney with the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs.

She said proponents of the bill are mistaken in thinking state regulators should liberalize price controls and shift their focus to matters of insurer solvency.

"The plan would basically mean that every rate request coming from an insurance company would be granted with no changes at all," Williamson said, adding that such a change could send prices spiraling upward.

The few downward price adjustments the consumer advocate's office has managed to broker, such as last year's reduction of a State Farm rate increase from the requested 27 percent to 19 percent, would come to an end if the bill were passed.

Under the bill, the state director of insurance would have the power as early as 2007 to declare the state's insurance market sufficiently competitive and thus hand over the department's authority over price increases to market forces.

In the meantime, the bill would set up a so-called flex-band, rate-setting system for personal lines such as home and auto insurance. The plan allows companies to raise or lower their rates within a certain range without state approval.

Insurers in South Carolina already use a 7 percent flex-band for auto rates.

The proposed bill would lift that threshold to 10 percent and extend it to providers of property and casualty insurance.

Only a handful of states use similarly relaxed price controls over personal lines insurers. Almost none have completely lifted price regulations on personal lines insurers altogether as the bill proposes.

Proponents of insurance deregulation, including Ernst "Ernie" Csiszar, the state's insurance director and a free-market advocate, praise the bill as a market-based solution to South Carolina's often sparse and costly property and casualty insurance, especially along the storm-prone coast.

Csiszar says the bill will increase competition by luring more companies to write business in the state.

The result, he says, will be an increase in the number of insurers and a decrease in premium levels, regulatory costs and the number of uninsured.

Sen. David L. Thomas, R-Greenville, sponsor of the bill, points to the state's auto insurance market as an example of how easing regulations encourages competition.

Since the passage of the 7 percent flex-band law in 1997, South Carolina has seen the number of companies writing policies roughly double.

"Six years ago, everybody complained about auto insurance. Today you hear very few complaints, because the fact is that it worked," Thomas said.

Opponents of the bill say that while there are more auto insurers in the state than several years ago, a few dominant insurance groups maintain a stranglehold on the market.

"I will object to the bill in the Senate until I'm fully satisfied that consumers are not going to be had by this legislation," said Sen. John C. Land III, D-Manning.

"The idea that we'll all be better off without regulating the insurance industry is untrue," he said. "The public needs protection, especially with respect to an industry that is not determining how much money it can bring to South Carolina but how much it can take out."

The Senate version of the bill reached the floor earlier this month but Sens. Robert Ford, D-Charleston, and Phil P. Leventis, D-Lee and Sumter, promptly objected to it. That means it will require a two-thirds vote to move forward this session.

Thomas, the bill's sponsor, said he thinks that is possible. Ford said he thinks the bill hasn't got a chance.

A similar bill in the House has not advanced to the floor yet.