You have described to a degree, but if you could elaborate can you describe how you will prioritize and oversee the larger range of issues for which you will be responsible. Tell us, what in your history has prepared you to lead the department of health and Human Services. Tom price thank you. As you and members know the mission of the department of health insert health and Human Services is to improve the health, safety, and wellbeing of the American People. In order to do that, i am committed to that mission. In order to do that you have to put together teams of individuals in east each sector of health and Human Services. My history of where ever i was or the work i did in communities was just to bring forward greatest quality of talent that we could assemble. The second is to understand the scope and the issues. Clearly having the experience both in the clinical arena as well as the legislative arena you can understand the scope of issues. Finally, focusing on results. Often times it gets kind of muddy here in washington, what we do. We name the programs. We make certain the resources are there to be able to provide the money for the programs to be run. Often times i think we dropped the ball on whether or not we are a college and commission. Are we truly improving the health and safety and wellbeing of the American People. One of the goals i have is to look at the metrics that we are looking at at the department and making sure that we are a couple she met mission. Publishing that mission. Accomplishing that mission. Began numerous initiatives, many of which have generated controversy. Could you tell us your position on the work and how it should or should not be continued in the future. Is soentative price it important to the quality of health care we need to provide. Innovation in fact is what leads Quality Health care. It is what expands the ability of Health Care Professionals to treat patients. Im a strong supporter of innovation. One of the roles that we as policymakers have is to incentivize innovation. The center for medicare, Medicaid Health innovation is one that might do that. I think however they have gotten off track. What they have done is defined areas where it is mandatorily dictating to physicians and other providers in this country how they must practice. Areaer it is a geographic including 67 or 68 areas in the country that have to perform a certain procedure in a certain way and use a certain implant in a certain way because the government says they have to without exception. Or whether it is 75 of the medicare drug demo, a demonstration product project , which dictates to physicians and other prayer letters providers what they must use. That to me is no longer an experiment or Pilot Project to determine whether or not an Innovative Solution might work. Changing the way that american medicine is practiced by folks making decisions here in washington, as opposed to patients and families and doctors making those decisions. Strong supporter of innovation, hope we can move cmm i in a direction that make sense for patients. Thank you. Medicare has lost more than 130 billion to improper payments in the last three years. The program has also been above the legal billing error Rate Threshold of 10 for the past four years. Trusteest medicare have issued concerns about looming medicare insolvency if we stay at the same spending levels, will your it ministration actively champion the Medicare Integrity Program so we can recover as much a much higher percentage of the billions of taxpayer dollars lost each year to billing mistakes and ensure that medicare will be in place for future american seniors . Also as a former practicing experiencewho has with medicare and Medicaid Programs do you have any insights into steps you think should be addressed to to address the multimilliondollar waste . Representative price nobody supports a bill that is not needed or has not been provided. This is one of those areas i think we need to focus on. I am certain that there are bad actors out there. I think they are a minority, but there are bad actors. I am certain if we were to focus specifically on those bad actors in real time, which is what happens in every other industry in the country. Realtime information is available and acted upon. Instead of trying to determine whether every single incident of care is necessary, if we were to focus on those individuals that were the bad actors specifically i think we could do a better job of not just identifying the fraud but ending at. Thank you. We will turn to you. Senator wyden thank you. I will start with the health care stock. Your position is that the trading was legal because in your view it complied with house rules. I think there are debatable legal questions and other matters. In eight immuno therapeutics is an obscure Australian Company who developed a treatment for immune system disorders and plans to seek fda approval. They are affected by congressional actions. Today the total value of your shares exceeds a halfmillion dollars. On the office of government ethics disclosure form you filed you significantly undervalued stock. You fail to include the value of more than 400,000 shares you bought at a significant discount during a private stock sale made available to specially chosen investors around labor day. You also significantly underreported the value of this purchase to the committee. It is worth more than twice what you reported. You heard about a stock from a health colleague who is a Board Director of this australian drug company and the largest shareholder. You got in on pricing placement, not available public to the public. In these placements you bought over 400,000 shares at discounts that were as much as 40 cheaper than the price on the austrian stock exchange. You are sitting Australian Stock Exchange. You are sitting on a committee over Major Health Care programs and trade policy. Yes or no . Doesnt this show bad judgment . Representative tom price if you said what you said was true. Wyden congressman, we have a paper trail for every comment. Yes or no, doesnt this show bad judgment . Representative tom price no. Lets let him answer the question. You kind of indicated he did something wrong. Let him explain why it was not wrong. Senator wyden it was a yes or no. I want to have him handle the problem. Senator wyden maybe it would be helpful if you laid out the accusation. Purchased stock in an s trillion Australian Company at discounts not available to the public. If i may, they were available to every single individual that was an investor at the time. Wyden that is not what we learned from company filings. Company filings at the Australian Stock Exchange state that the specific private placement would be made below market rate. Says, itury department is only offered to sophisticated investors in a nonpublic manner. We have a paper trail for everyone of the statements that i have gone into. Is set ontotocks committees, introducing legislation that directly impacts the value of the stocks. What legislation without being . Would that be. Senator wyden we will take you through various bills. Tom price the reality is that everything i did was ethical, and transparent. The reason you know about these things is because we have made that Information Available in real time as required by the house ethics committee. There is not anything you have diebolds here that has not been public knowledge. Wyden your stake is more than five times larger than the figure you reported to the ethics officials when you became a nominee. Tom price if you had listened to your Committee Staff i believe you would know that our belief is that that was a clerical error at the time the 278 u. S. Filed. 278 e was filed. We dont know whos and it was on. There was no malicious senator wyden congressman, you also reported it to a questionnaire to the committee and you had to revise the yesterday because it was wrong. Tom price the reason was when asked about the value i thought it meant value at the time i purchased some another value at a nebulous time which supposedly senator wyden this weekend the president issued a executive ordern instruct me department and agencies to do Everything Possible to roll back the a portable care act. If confirmed he will be the captain of the health team and in charge of him lamenting the order. Yes or no and lamenting the order. The executiveer order will you commit that no one will be worse off. Price i commit to working with you and every signal member of congress to make sure that we have the highest Quality Health care and every single american has a this to affordable coverage. Senator wyden that is not what i asked. I asked will you commit that no one will be worse off under the executive order . When you guarantee that no one will lose coverage under the executive order . I guarantee you that the individuals that lost coverage under the Affordable Care act we will commit to making certain they do not lose coverage under whatever replacement plan comes forward. That is the commitment i provide. Senator wyden the question again is will anyone lose coverage. You answered to something i did not ask. I will wrap up by saying come up by saying, what you commit to not implementing the order until the replacement plan is in place . I commit to you and the American People is to conduct keep patients at the center. Everyeans making certain single american has access to Affordable Health care that will provide the highest Quality Health care the world can provide. Senator wyden i will close by saying is what the congressman is saying is that the order could go into effect before there is a replacement plan. An independent expert says this could destroy the market on which millions of working families buy health care. ,n the questions that i asked will the congressman commit that nobody will be worse off, no one will lose coverage, we did not get an answer. Thank you. Chairman how can anyone commit to that . You havey, dr. Price, been accused of investing in securities and you disclosed the wrong value of shares you owned in immunotherapeutics. Dr. Price hass a diversified portfolio with Morgan Stanley in a broker directed account. Correct me if i am wrong on any of this, dr. , the portfolio includes both health care and nonhealthcare stocks. His Financial Advisor design the portfolio and directed all trades in the account. And not dr. Price has the discretion to decide which securities to buy and sell. On march 17, 2016 in a periodic rebalancing of the portfolio, the Financial Advisor directed the purchase of 26 shares in Zimmer Biomed worth under 3000. Price ofer notify dr. The purchase on april 4, 2016. On hisce disclosed them report on april 15. Began his legislative effort related to the copperheads of joint republic replacement project in 2015. With one exception, all of his stocks are held in three broker directed accounts. Direct he nor his wife or provide input regarding investments in these accounts. Immunotherapeutics is the one exception. Dr. Price decided to invest i will based on Public Information regarding his work on multiple sclerosis treatment is a disease as a disease. He has involved himself in treatment for years. He has put his own research into the company. Invested money in the company in january 2015 and report of the investments to house ethics in february of the year other than in february of that year. He also disclosed other investments. To divestas agreed all shares. Is that a correct . Tom price that is correct. I want to point out that anybody who knows me well knows that i would never violate the trust. I know the environment that we are in. You mention it in your opening statement. I appreciate you correcting the record. Collect mr. Chairman is to chairman, you just consumed two minutes beyond your opening statement. In the interest of fair play, is it appropriate for someone to note that two minutes is also owed to senator wyden . We already did go over two minutes. S we go forward i ask u2 chairman i will not link wish my role as chairman. I have always been good about giving time that you need. I will try to do that. Thank you. Chairman i will not allow things that are false to go forward without some sort of comment. We just cannot allow that to happen. Mr. Chairman, a unanimous dissent request. Bipartisan disclosure memo, i would like to ask that it be made part of the memo. Chairman without objection. Senator roberts. Senator roberts did you really wink at me and smile . Bless your heart. Thank you. Good doctor, thank you for coming. I think it is important to make clear off the bat that even if congress and the Incoming Administration were to do nothing, absolutely nothing amending or repealing parts of the Affordable Care act, the law is not working . It is collapsing. The prices are unaffordable and the markets nearly nonexistent. Few options to several states and counties. This year one out of every three counties in this country only has one insurer offering coverage on the exchange. What tools do you have, or will you have when you are confirmed which could be utilized over the next couple of months to provide individualnd improve insurance market, make them more appealing so that carriers will want to come back and provide more Coverage Options as we transition away from the Affordable Health care act . I think it is important for us to admit what the American People know that that is that this law is not working. Certainly has not been working for folks in the individual and group market. Premiums are up significantly, they were supposed to go down by 2500. There more than that. You have deductibles that have escalated to 600012,000 dollars. As you mentioned, you have states where there is only one provider. You have one third of the counties in this country where there is only one carrier. This is maybe working for government or Insurance Companies, but not patients. Try to reconstitute the individual in the Small Group Market. That begins by providing stability in our conversation and town. Tone. Those providing Insurance Products across this country, we understand. We hear the challenges that you have. They are exact exiting the market. We need to say, there is help on the way to allow us to reconstitute the individual and Small Group Market that allows for folks to gain the kind of coverage they want for themselves and their families, not that the Government Forces them to buy. It allows them to purchase coverage at a reasonable amount that makes it so they do not have deductibles that are out of through the roof. Where they dont have the ability to pay the premiums and the deductible. There are so many things we are to focus on to make sure, again, the American People have access to the highest quality care that is affordable for them. Dr. I have 84 critical access hospitals in my state. It is part of the Rural Health Care delivery system, under great stress. Have seen when i visit with hospital administrators all throughout campus kansas, there was a time when i knew every one of them. They are scratching their heads over regulations coming out of hhs cms. All of the other agencies that you oversee when you were confirmed. I mentioned the use program for Electronic Health care records. Minutesused to spend 10 or 15 minutes with patients, it is down to two minutes or three minutes. Criticalur rule for access hospitals numerous other documentation requirements it seems to me there is a lack of understanding of our provider shortages in rural areas. We are hanging on by a thread. How these one size regulations from washington simply do not translate to rural areas. My question is, how will you work to ensure an effective but smarter them a less burdensome rule making policy process . Critical, this is because as you mentioned in rural areas, georgia is the largest state east of the mississippi and we have a large ovulation. Critical access hospitals are so important to communities around the state, and truly around the nation. The regulatory scheme put in place is choking the individuals actually trying to provide the care. So much so that you have physicians and other providers leaving the practice. They are leaving the care of patients. Not because they have forgotten how to do it or they grew tired. It is because of the onerous nature of the regulatory scheme coming out of washington dc. The meaningful use process project you mentioned takes it more difficult. We turned physicians into data entry clerks. A you just have tosk what they are to ask whether are doing and you see patients at the top of their head, as they punch information into a computer as opposed to that sharing of information that is so vital between a physician and patient. A recognition of the problem is important. A recognition of the importance of Rural Health Care in the nation and how it needs to be bolstered up. Looking at the consequences of what we do as a government. As i mentioned, often times i dont think we look at the consequences. We pass the rule and regulation, we instituted, we think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it is in fact harming