The U.S. spent $2.2 Trillion Dollars in 2007 and $2.4 Trillion Dollars in 2008 on Health Care!  A good chunk of money goes every year to pay health insurance companies for health insurance premiums.

The all-for-profit Health Insurance Companies are currently exempt* from antitrust* laws and therefore do not compete against each other and the result is that health insurance premiums have doubled since 2001!  We need Health Care Reform in order to reduce these costs or, at least, ensure that they don’t continue to climb.

“Yesterday Senator Harry Reid, Senator Chuck Schumer and I announced plans to introduce the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act as an amendment to the Senate's final health care reform bill. Every Senator will soon have an opportunity to put people before profits by voting to end the out-dated antitrust exemption for insurance companies.”
~ Senator Patrick Leahy on 10/22/09

*The McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 exempted health insurance companies from the antitrust regulations that apply to nearly every other industry, rules that protect consumers from anti-competitive business practices like price-fixing.  This is why the health insurance companies have been able to increase their premium rates to three times higher than the increase in income received by the average wage earner each year.

* antitrust = "legislation against or opposition to trusts or combinations; specifically : consisting of laws to protect trade and commerce from unlawful restraints and monopolies or unfair business practices."

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/patients/articles/?storyId=28752

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/oct/07/jay-rockefeller/rockefeller-says-health-insurance-premiums-have-do/

http://www.healthreformwatch.com/2009/08/13/last-years-health-care-bill-equaled-24-trillion/