DETROIT — Attorney General Mike Cox said Tuesday that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is attempting to use a lame duck Legislature to raise health insurance rates and remove some oversight by his and the governor's offices.

A package of bills before state lawmakers would allow the nonprofit to institute a rate increase of 75 percent without any checks, Cox said at a news conference in Detroit.

"This is just a license to print more money for Blue Cross," Cox said.

For its part, Blue Cross wants lawmakers to quickly pass bills it says could help improve its finances. The bills would change rules for the individual health insurance market and allow a Blue Cross for-profit subsidiary, The Accident Fund, to expand its product offerings.

Critics, including Cox, have said the bills would give Blue Cross unfair advantages over its competitors.

The bills don't simply focus on Blue Cross, but attempt to increase regulations for all health insurance carriers, said Blue Cross spokesman R. Andrew Hetzel.

The Legislature has spent 13 months putting together the bills that Hetzel said would end commercial carrier practices of raising premiums without limits and raising them when someone gets ill while covered.

"The market is structured to allow commercial carriers to reject anybody for any reason," he said. "It's driven a significant number of unhealthy people into Blue Cross' insurance pool."

Blue Cross covers more than 60 percent of the state's overall health insurance market and has nearly 4.7 million customers. It now has roughly one-third to one-half of the individual market, depending on how it is defined.

Blue Cross lost $111 million over the first nine months of this year on individual coverage, Hetzel said.

But Cox said Blue Cross is not struggling financially. As of last year, Blue Cross had a surplus of $2.9 billion and has spent more than $493 million since 2005 gobbling up for-profit companies, he said.

"I think the Big Three would love to have that kind of record," Cox said.

Cox and representatives from Consumers Union and the AARP are trying to convince legislators to vote down the bills.

Part of Blue Cross' strategy is to use a time when 46 members of the state House are leaving to get the bills passed, he said.

"They don't have to face the voters again," Cox said.

The Democrat-led House and Republican-led Senate have passed bills that would change rules for the individual health insurance market, but the versions differ substantially. A compromise would have to be found before any changes become part of Michigan law.

Changes could be delayed for several months if a deal is not reached in the next few weeks.