Mike Johanns

I think you make a compelling point.

Well, the reality here in this country too, as you know, if you end up at an emergency ward, they treat you.

I think it's the obligation of this Committee to act.

This practice appears to have forced consumers to pay more.

It's amazing how quickly you become the Ranking Member here.

If that's what this is about today that you're saying to us, Mike, if you could just make this as readable as what you got when you signed up for your Blue Cross policy here with the Federal Government, as did every other Federal employee…

What we need, I think, is some really good concrete ideas on how to make that better.

This would warrant a hearing. This would warrant us looking into this and digging deep to see what's going on.

Our policyholders, given the opportunity to be aware of the features of the very policy that they think they are buying.

There is a national debate going on now about health care reform.

If it is not being overcome then you do have a serious problem. You have got a serious management issue.

I think the report is very thorough. We can read that. We can understand, man, something really went wrong here.

I appreciate your work.

I will tell you as a Member of the Committee I was very concerned about the report that was released by the VA Inspector General last week entitled, 'Use and Reprocessing of the Flexible Fiberoptic Endoscopes at VA Medical Facilities.'

The tool we have been given, I think in the end is going to be the capital requirement.

I just worry that what you are doing here, unless you do something in that area, you are going to put the little guys out of business.

I would hate to think that we are not doing something here that will protect taxpayers in the future.

If there are that many small firms out there that are going to benefit from this, my address is online.

There are always unintended consequences, and I just want to understand them.

One of the observations at least that I have made as I look back over the last months is it seems to me the big got bigger, they got more tangled up in so many parts of the economy.

I think if we look back in 20 years and found out that is where we ended up here, that would be a tragedy.

I do not think at the end of the day that most people on Wall Street are competent to be a rating agency.

Your testimony worries me.

The transparency is not the issue. You can bring up the transparency and I think everybody would love that.

I ask these questions--and I'll be very candid about it--because I worry that, because of economics, or whatever, we're trying to do this on the cheap.