I think in a sense the discussion we are going to have today, people all over this country. In a sense that many of us included myself, have seen folks go into a hospital for one problem or another and end coming out different than it went in and sometimes dying as a result. What is widely known is the major cause of death in the United States today is the heart disease, a serious problem. The second leading cause of death is cancer. According to the 2010 cdc report, 597,000 people died of heart disease, 574,000 died of cancer. What is not widely known and in fact what the function of this hearing is about and i hope to do my best with the help of my fellow senators and members of the panel is to start focusing attention on the third leading cause of death in the United States of america and that will come as the great surprise and the third leading cause of death in this country has to do with preventable medical errors in hospitals. Recent article published in the journal of Patient