This hearing is not about demonizing capitalists or destroying free markets.

A greedy mentality of identifying companies that can be acquired simply by where you can get away with raising prices by the largest percentage possible has real public policy and health care ramifications.

In case you have not noticed, the real ramifications in our political process going on right now could lead to instability of our Government, our economy, and our standing in the world.

The notion that we can sit idly by while smart people on Wall Street can do ledger entries to create another layer of profit in the health care sector to benefit multimillionaires on the backs of patients, and ultimately taxpayers, cannot…

I think the discussion raises an even more important question about patient assistance programs and the copay coupons.

Congress should be doing more to address these high drug prices, and we need to be doing it now.

Do not tell me you do not look at it as an investment, because if it costs you money to double the price of a drug and then offer a patient assistance program, you would not be doing it.

A drug used to cost $1,000, and you doubled the price of the drug to $2,000.

If I am following the math right on this, you double the price even if you manage to give a waiver to the customer, you are still making a lot more money on this.

These programs are illegal because Medicare and Medicaid understand that the programs are scams to hide the true cost of the products from the consumers and drive up the cost for all of the taxpayers.

The same policies that make sense in a low price environment, make sense in a high price environment.

we should not change our policy based on the current price of oil.

shouldn't be based on the market price of oil.

the current price of oil should not play a role in the Administration's plan.

You know, let us pick up on this question about regulatory climate and market security.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Mr. Chairman.

And what the Fed and the FDIC are saying very publicly today is that we have at least five too-big-to-fail banks in this country, that if any one of them starts to go down, they risk taking the entire economy with them.

It is critically important that our biggest banks have sufficient assets in a time of crisis and that those assets be liquid.

But not the intensity.

But the reality is, they put everybody else at risk when they are not properly supervised.

Do you think that Dodd-Frank and the ancillary rules have made financial markets more resilient and better equipped to handle the kind of stress we saw in 2008?

the fact that you say over the last 9 months we have heard nothing about the health of our largest financial institutions.

the giant banks want to advance the story that they are over-regulated, but it seems to me that the report yesterday on living wills demonstrates that, if anything, today, they continue to be under-regulated.

Would you have concerns about liquidity in a time of crisis if municipal debt securities were counted as 2A Level assets instead of 2B Level assets?

Liquidity that disappears exactly when the market needs it is not very valuable.