45 million Americans are uninsured today, including more than 17 million women. Millions more are underinsured. Medicaid, Medicare, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) provide an essential safety net to the most vulnerable women and families, but today, those programs and the people who rely on them are at risk.

Health insurance premiums for family coverage have increased by 87 percent between 2000 and 2006 more than four times the growth in wages. Workers who have health care through their employers pay an average of $2,585 a year for family coverage. Women are disproportionately likely to own or work for the smallest businesses, which face the highest barriers to providing health insurance. Only 48% of these small businesses provide coverage for their workers.

The National Partnership is working to expand access to high quality, affordable health care through public programs and private insurance, and steadfastly opposes efforts to reduce costs by diminishing coverage or limiting consumer protections. As health care costs continue to rise, we must consider solutions that will expand access to affordable and comprehensive coverage, help those most in need, provide strong consumer protections, and offer meaningful solutions for covering the uninsured. For example, the National Partnership has joined forces with children's advocates to work for comprehensive, affordable, high-quality health coverage for all children.

At the same time, research shows that Americans today have only a 50/50 chance of getting the right health care-- pretty poor odds considering how much this national spends on that care. Poor quality accounts for 30% of our runaway health care costs. Two million Americans a year get a hospital-acquired infection and 90,000 die from it. Preventable medical errors cause more deaths than breast cancer, AIDS and motor vehicle accidents combined. The National Partnership is leading efforts to make our health care system more accountable and to give the public the information it deserves to make good health care decisions.