my name is sally covington and i am the executive director of community campaigns for quality care. we're a nonprofit public charity working with unionses and purchasers on health care cost control as opposed to cutting benefits, and i'm speaking briefly today on behalf of both seiu local 10 21 and the public employees committee. and i guess really what we wanted to say and just to try and broaden the perspective and acknowledge some of the comments that relate to that broader perspective, you know, 4.4, 4.3 billion is obviously a big number and as many have said, the thing that is most going to determine if that number goes up or down is the rate of medical inflation which a we -- almost all of us know is far surpassed the rate of general inflation economy and also workers wages. and, so, that's going to be the key issue here. so, from the standpoint of defining the problem, we must ask what's driving this medical inflation rate so high. and on that there's not a lot of dispute. experts widely agree that, first of all, health care spending is so high because provider prices are hig