President Barack Obama is expected to unveil his proposal for reforming the nation's broken health care system today. One of his proposals involves the federal government regulating the premiums that insurance companies can charge. If you've ever had to purchase insurance for yourself, you know that the cost can be outrageous and completely unaffordable.

Obama is seizing on the recent 39 percent rate hike by Anthem Blue Cross in California as an example of what is wrong with the health care system. According to the New York Times, the hike is far above the pace of medical inflation.

According to the Associated Press, other details of Obama's plan include:

Requiring "most Americans to carry health insurance coverage, with federal subsidies to help many afford the premiums. Hewing close to a stalled Senate bill, it would bar insurance companies from denying coverage to people with medical problems or charging them more. A tax on high-cost health insurance plans objected to by House Democrats - and labor unions - would be scaled back. The expected price tag is around $1 trillion over 10 years.

Republicans, of course, have said they will continue to oppose the plan. They want to erase the proposals of the last several months and produce "a more modest bill that tries to curb costs and helps small businesses and people with health problems secure coverage," the AP writes. Ahead of a televised summit, Republicans are now pushing the argument that Americans don't want health care reform.

"The fundamental point I want to make is the arrogance of all of this. You know, they are saying: 'Ignore the wishes of the American people. We know more about this than you do. And we're going to jam it down your throats no matter what.' That is why the public is so angry at this Congress and this administration over this issue," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, said on "Fox News Sunday."That is not what the 46-million uninsured Americans are saying. Unfortunately, it is easy to manipulate the public with lies about what providing health care coverage for most people in this country would mean. A debate about how doing something as humane as providing for the health care needs of American citizens turned into a debate about whether America was a socialist country. How is it arrogant to want to prevent people from going bankrupt because of health issues?

According to the New York Times: "Senator (Dianne)Feinstein, in an interview, pointed to the $12.2 billion in profits reaped by the five biggest private insurers in 2009. "When you look at the profits in '09, up 56 percent over the year before," she said, "you begin to understand that something is going on that is not in the interests of the American people."

That's why it's time for Americans to wake up and cut through all the rhetoric. The bottom line is that this country's health care system is in need of repair. It's not a modest change that is required but an overhaul.
Over the history of this country, the public has often resisted things that are good for this country.

There was resistance to social security, Medicare, the rights of people to organize into unions and the civil rights movement. All of these things have made this country a better place.

Providing better health care falls into that same category.