Massachusetts was the first in the nation to try a health insurance exchange—but it’s also working hard to keep costs down. As part of that effort, state regulators rejected several rate increase requests from health insurers this spring. When the companies sued, a state judge upheld the decisions.

Here in New Mexico, the state Public Regulation Commission recently directed the state insurance division to suspend the rate increase, provoking threats of a lawsuit by Blue Cross Blue Shield. And stories about what Massachusetts has done are making the rounds among state lawmakers and officials following health care.

There has been high-profile fallout from the state Insurance Division’s approval in April of a 21-percent hike in what Blue Cross Blue Shield charges 40,000 New Mexicans in premiums.

“There’s worry between now and 2014 that there will be huge increases in premiums,” Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque, said Thursday during a meeting of a legislative working group.

It’s a question other New Mexico state lawmakers have asked. They cite the Blue Cross Blue Shield rate request as the first of possibly many rate increase requests that will come from New Mexico health insurers in anticipation of some of the restrictions imposed on health insurers by the new federal health care law.

Not everyone thinks that the new law is driving up costs. Some local and national officials say the new federal law expands coverage to the uninsured but doesn’t do a good job of containing the rise in health care costs.