The healthcare Gestapo is up to their old tricks:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today will release a new report showing more dramatic health insurance premium increases are proposed in Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington.

Keying off the Obama administration’s recent probe into a planned 39 percent rate hike from Anthem Blue Cross in California, Sebelius will detail large increases in six other states and say that given record insurer profits, health care reform has never been more urgent.

At 11:30 a.m. today, Sebelius will release the report, obtained by TPMDC and titled “Insurance Companies Prosper, Families Suffer: Our Broken Health Insurance System.”

It finds that Anthem’s rate increase (now delayed until May) is “not unique” and that experts say premiums will keep rising.

The report quotes National Association of Insurance Commissioners officials predicting the nation will “see rate increases of 20, 25, 30 percent.”

(emphasis added)

And yet the Republicans want to block healthcare reform, placing politics above national interest.