SPRINGFIELD — State senators said Monday they hope to send a message later this week to the Quinn administration that it reverse an early April decision to change health care coverage for thousands of state employees and retirees.

The Legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability is scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to review the state’s health insurance contracts — all of which have been awarded but are being protested — for the year beginning July 1.

Urbana-based Health Alliance, which would lose its contract to provide coverage to thousands of employees, dependents and retirees, is leading the call to rebid the deal. Company officials say the procurement process was flawed, and that switching coverage from Health Alliance to Blue Cross Blue Shield will harm patients and cost the state millions of dollars more annually.

Sen. Mike Frerichs, D-Champaign, said he believes the commission will ask the Quinn administration to rebid the health insurance contracts.

“I expect there will be a resolution calling to disagree with the process of the awards, and to call for a rebidding of all of this,” said Frerichs, who is one of 12 legislators on COGFA, a bipartisan commission with members from both the Senate and the House.

Sen. Dale Righter, R-Charleston, said passage of the resolution will send a strong message at a critical time in this spring’s legislative process. Lawmakers are scheduled to end their spring session by June 1.

“That’s a large, bipartisan group of lawmakers who if they as a group go to the governor’s office and say, ‘Maybe we don’t have the statutory authority but we’re telling you that you made a mistake here and you need to start over,’ I think the governor’s office would be likely to listen to that.

“This governor’s office wants to do certain things and it needs votes from both Republicans and Democrats to get those done. If the members of COGFA, looking at this situation and saying that this is a substantial change in state policy and we need to check the process, I think the governor’s office — along with the pressure they’re getting from the public — will retreat on this.”

The timing of Wednesday’s meeting is opportune, Righter said.

“This is beneficial for the people in East Central Illinois in my area who rely on Health Alliance and Humana (another provider protesting the contract awards) because we’re here and we can apply that pressure right now,” Righter said. “I get the impression that a clear majority of the people on the commission believe that what the governor’s office has done here is clearly wrong, not just from the standpoint of health care and continuity of care, but just from a numbers issue for the taxpayers. The assumptions that the governor’s office and their people made in arriving at the conclusion that this was the right thing to do and that this would actually save us $100 million is so far from the reality that we know to be true. It’s going to cost us $100 million or more in addition to what we’re paying now. On that alone the governor’s office ought to look at that and say that this isn’t the right thing to do.”

Frerichs’ and Righter’s comments came after an 80-minute hearing Monday morning by the Senate Insurance Committee on Health Alliance’s apparent loss of its state employees and retirees contract.

More than a dozen Health Alliance customers, many from the Champaign-Urbana area, told the committee they wanted to keep the Urbana-based company as their health care provider. Many also urged committee members to start the contract bidding process over again.