Jessica Farb is a Director on the Health Care team at the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), where she leads studies in several areas, but specializes in Medicare, quality of care, and the Indian Health Service. She also leads the Health Care team’s Research Support Group—a specialized team of data analysts and economists that support the analytic work across the entire team.  Her extensive Medicare payment work has included detailed analyses of Medicare’s physician payment systems, as well as payment reforms for hospitals, dialysis providers, ambulance suppliers, and skilled nursing facilities.  Ms. Farb’s reports have helped inform policymakers in their deliberations on the long-term sustainability of the Medicare program, and resulted in savings of over $15 billion. Ms. Farb also served for two and a half years as a Director on GAO’s International Affairs and Trade team, where she led the Countering Overseas Threats portfolio of work. In 2011 and 2012, Ms. Farb served as a detailee to the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health. During her detail, she developed several pieces of Medicare payment reform legislation, including draft legislation to reform Medicare’s sustainable growth rate mechanism that was previously used to update the physician fee schedule. Throughout her GAO tenure, Ms. Farb has been recognized with numerous awards, including a Meritorious Service Award in 2010 and a Managing Director’s Award for exceptional performance in 2007. She received her master’s degree in international development studies from the George Washington University and holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a bachelor’s degree in social science education from Appalachian State University.