Health care reform was one of the "big 3" issues Obama said he was going to address right off the bat. He's trying to push it through because he made such a big deal about it and he doesn't want it to come back and bite his rear end.
If you want to read something very interesting about health care costs and have a lot of time, check out this article from the New Yorker. It's legnthy but interesting in revealing one of the many reasons for the sky high costs of health care today. The article focuses on one extreme case, but you could probably find a trend if you looked at other towns in the US.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...urrentPage=all