Trade associations scrambling to fill out sagging membership lists – and bank accounts – may have found hope in two bills on Beacon Hill.

House Bill 3452 and Senate Bill would allow small business groups and trade associations to negotiate with health insurance companies and secure group rates for their members, just as labor unions and municipal governments do now.

To be eligible, the bills require trade associations to exist for at least five years and have more than 100 members.

Kevin Cuff, executive director of the Massachusetts Mortgage Bankers Association (MMBA), testified in front of the joint committee on financial services in June in favor of the bill. Cuff said a group health insurance plan would be an appetizing carrot for mortgage shops to join the MMBA. If the option had been available previously, Cuff said, today’s housing climate would look much different, as more mortgage brokers would have been compliant during the subprime era.

“It would … be a tremendous tool to be more certain that you have more members who come under control in an industry,” Cuff said. “We could have controlled the fallout of the mortgage industry in the commonwealth of Massachusetts a whole heck of a lot better.”

There is one trade association that already has a negotiated group insurance plan: the Massachusetts Bankers Association (MBA). According to Kevin Kiley, the MBA’s executive vice president and COO, his association’s group insurance plan was grandfathered into the state provisions when the laws were changed to disallow smaller bargaining groups in 1996.

“The program of offering a group insurance plan through the [MBA] has been in existence for 50 or 60 years,” Kiley said. “It was done through a group insurance trust, and it was offered as a group member benefit.”

When asked if the group insurance plan was a draw to MBA membership, Kiley said, “I’m sure it is. It’s an added value to being a member.”

Kiley said he had reviewed the proposed legislation, and that it would not change the MBA’s long standing program.

This is not the first time such a bill has been through committee on Beacon Hill. But the health insurance industry holds some considerable sway in Massachusetts – not to mention national – political circles, and the similar bills never made it past the floor of the House.

But now, with Massachusetts requiring everyone to have health insurance, and many small companies needing any possible savings just to stay in business, the political and economic climate may be just right.

“We have mandatory health insurance in Massachusetts, and to disallow small business groups to negotiate their premiums makes no sense, certainly to any democratic politician,” Cuff said. “It’s an argument that defies all logic. But they still make it.”

The sponsor of H 3452 is Rep. Steven Walsh, D-Lynn, who was the chairman of the joint committee on community development and small business last session. Walsh said that on a listening tour as chairman, high health insurance costs was one of two issues every single business and association brought to the table (the second was reduced access to capital).

Walsh said the state’s Health Connector, which was created by the health care reform bill of 2006, was intended to also help smaller business.

“One of the reasons why [small group bargaining] wasn’t necessarily looked at before was we needed to make monumental changes to our system,” Walsh said. “But you always like to look back and see what got left out. The [small businesses] that may not have been at the table.

“These are small businesses that are really having trouble making ends meet,” he said. “We’re trying to look at ways to make sure that small businesses had an interest in offering insurance to their employees, and remain compliant with the law.”

The Retailers Association of Massachusetts, a trade association with 3,100 member businesses, has been the biggest proponent of this type of health care reform. William Rennie, the association’s vice president, said it hopes to pattern this bill after the success of the state’s Group Insurance Commission (GIC), which allows municipalities to combine their bargaining power to lower insurance rates for their employees.

Rennie said that over the last decade, his members have seen double-digit percentage increases in their health care premiums – up to 30 percent – while the GIC has seen only single-digit increases.

“We’re trying to go after that model, and put something like that in for the smaller businesses and the non profits of Massachusetts,” Rennie said. “[Now] there is no negotiation [for small business groups]. They’re left at the mercy of the insurers on pricing.”