Chairman Baucus, Ranking Member Grassley, and members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to participate in this Roundtable on how to reform our health care delivery system.

The National Partnership for Women & Families is a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy
organization with over three and a half decades of experience promoting access to quality health
care, fairness in the workplace, and policies that help women and men meet the dual demands of
work and family. Over the past 15 years, the National Partnership has brought together a wide
range of consumer and patient groups to push for meaningful reforms of our health care system — focusing on improving quality, getting costs under control and expanding affordable coverage.

I applaud the Committee for recognizing that these issues — quality, cost, and coverage — are inextricably linked, and for beginning these Roundtable discussions in the essential first place, with this discussion of delivery system reform.

The American people know that our health care system is broken and needs transformational
change. They see a delivery system that is centered on the provider, rather than the patient.
They see a payment system that rewards volume over value, promotes fragmentation over
coordination, and rewards specialty care at the expense of primary care. Ours is a system that is
largely blind to quality, outcomes, or appropriateness of the care delivered and received. More »