let me introduce alice m. rivlin. it is a pleasure to introduce alice. she has advised and chaired and co-chaired a number of projects, including this task force, a project on debt reduction. she is currently the director of the health policy center at brookings. she was the omb director from 1994 until 1996. ms. rivlin: i'm delighted to be back at the bipartisan policy center. i get back here fairly often. the reason i get back here is because this is where serious, substantive discussions happen across party lines so that we can actually make progress on doing something, not just shouting at each other from democratic and republican corners. so i love this place, whatever the subject is. and today's subject is preventing disease. now, everybody thinks that is a good thing, but we are not doing it. or we're not doing it nearly as much as we could. so let's be clear first why preventing disease is such a good thing. why did we all come to listen to this program? i think it is mainly because health is a good thing. that sounds obvious, but health is somet