Good Afternoon,

A lot of people think that health insurance reform doesn't matter to them because they already have coverage. And it's easy to understand why some Americans might resist changing the insurance system for fear that significant reform would threaten what they have now.

There is a threat to health care coverage in the country, but it isn't reform: it's doing nothing. Rising costs of insurance premiums are pushing more and more people into the ranks of the uninsured.

The President discusses all of this in his weekly address this morning:

  [www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/19/weekly-address-premiums-profits-and-need-health-reform?utm_source=33&utm_medium=email&utm_content=image&utm_campaign=healthreform

At a time when health insurance companies are fighting as hard as ever to stop health reform, their actions couldn't show more clearly why we need it.

In California, beneficiaries recently received letters from Anthem Blue Cross announcing their rates would go up as high as 39 percent. Elsewhere, in the last year alone, large insurers have requested premium increases of 56 percent in Michigan, 24 percent in Connecticut, 23 percent in Maine and 20 percent in Oregon.

If we don't pass reform, premiums will continue to rise and Americans will continue to be at the mercy of the worst insurance company practices and abuses.

We’re closer than ever to making reform a reality. We can't let up now.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Sebelius

Secretary of Health and Human Services