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Following disturbing news that small business health insurance costs would be going up as much as 15% next year, the chairman of the Senate health committee sent letters to major insurers asking for key information.

The main points in the letters basically point out that small business health insurance is, according to the article at Reuters, "dysfunctional" and simultaneously "lacking in transparency."

And then there's the little issue of how many insurance CEOs are making more than $5 million a year.

U.S. lawmakers have been putting pressure on insurance companies in the last year, threatening to reinstate anti-trust laws that had been waived for them, and of course, working to offer Americans a public insurance option in order to create competition among insurance agencies.

Small business health insurance is often more expensive than that offered to large corporations, since larger numbers of enrollees lower the cost ratio for insurance agencies. In any large group, most people will stay healthy, and their premiums pay for the unhealthy.

But is it fair that small businesses, which struggle to provide insurance based on tighter budgets and suffer more sensitivity to economic downturns, should also be saddled with higher insurance costs?

Most say no. Insurance companies are swearing that it's the rising cost of health care that leads to inflated premiums, not them. However, as one senator put it very succintly: "they're just lying."