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Top health insurance execs met at a White House meeting after which Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stated that she wants insurance companies to post rate increase information online as well as financial data to back them up.

“This market doesn’t work,” Sebelius said, “but in the meantime, we want to shine a bright light.”

She also commented, “the meeting was really focused on what is happening with the kind of jaw-dropping rate increases that people are seeing, particularly in the individual and small-group market and what are the reasons for it.”

The meeting, called by Sebelius, brought together insurance companies’ CEOs –Cigna Corp’s David Cordani, UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s Stephen Hemsley, Aetna Inc’s Ronald Williams, and WellPoint Inc’s Angela Braly among them – amid the current controversy over customers receiving steep rate hikes.

The president stopped the meeting to present a letter CEOs written by an Ohio woman whose insurance is set to go up by 40 percent.

The House and Senate passed separate healthcare reform bills that were stalled due to Democrats loosing their supermajority back in January. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reported Thursday that her chamber would in fact be passing the bill.

CEOs left the meeting at the White House feeling it was a positive one. “I do believe it was a constructive exchange. The atmosphere was not contentious,” UnitedHealth’s Hemsley reportedly stated. There was, however, no commitment made by the executives about whether or not they would be posting more information online. Sebelius plans to send a follow-up letter to each of the insurers.

WellPoint Braly, who has faced the most heat over rate hikes of up to 39 percent with its California Anthem Blue Cross unit says, “you really do have to have a balance … between the rate that is charged and the solvency of the business.”

This does not, though, remedy the fact that most Americans are already in a position of possibly losing health insurance coverage because they simply can’t afford it; won’t raising prices by this much only perpetuate – or possibly amplify – that possibility?