President Barack Obama cited the death of St. Louis activist Melanie Shouse in promising not to give up on fighting for health care reform.

In a speech Thursday the president spoke of Shouse’s death and her obituary that day in the Post-Dispatch.

"How can I say to her .... "We’re giving up?" Obama said.

The newspaper reported that Shouse, 41, had died Saturday after a four and half year battle with stage four breast cancer.

She had used her savings to open a business and said she couldn’t afford expensive health insurance.

She had delayed going to a doctor after she began to feel sick. She explained that she could only afford so-called "catastrophic" insurance — one that required her to pay $5,000 in deductibles before the insurance kicked in.

Shouse spent the last years of her life advocating that consumers "take on the Big Insurance Monopoly and liberate American families from the slavery of skyrocketing insurance premiums and cancelled coverage, which leave millions of us in a state of perpetual fear and insecurity."

Shouse wanted to live long enough to see Congress pass health care reform.

Here are excerpts of the president’s comments Thursday to a Democratic National Committee fundraiser:

"I got a letter — I got a note today from one of my staff — they forwarded it to me — from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer.

"She didn’t have insurance. She couldn’t afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.

(Shouse’s family said she was cremated while wearing the t-shirt, as she had requested.)

Obama: "But think about this: She was fighting that whole time not just to get me elected, not even to get herself health insurance, but because she understood that there were others coming behind her who were going to find themselves in the same situation and she didn’t want somebody else going through that same thing.

"How can I say to her, "You know what? We’re giving up"? How can I say to her family, "This is too hard"?

"How can Democrats on the Hill say, "This is politically too risky"? How can Republicans on the Hill say, "We’re better off just blocking anything from happening"?

Shouse’s friends recently demonstrated in front of her insurance company’s headquarters. The company wouldn’t pay for a more expensive treatment that Shouse said she needed.

Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro of Connecticut called Shouse a week before she died as part of a last effort to get the insurance company to approve the treatment.

Shouse’s mother, Marianne Shouse, had angry words for the insurance company president:

"My daughter could have had more time on the face of the earth if not for people like her."

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