CLOSE Drug executive Martin Shkreli, who vigorously defends his decision to hike the price of a life-saving drug, went silent and smirked as he appeared at a Congressional hearing on Thursday. VPC 
 
 Martin Shkreli takes his seat before the House Committee on Oversight & Reform on Feb. 4, 2016. (Photo: Nathan Bomey, USA TODAY) 
 
 WASHINGTON—Embattled drug entrepreneur Martin Shkreli — who vigorously defended his decision to hike the price of a life-saving drug from $13.50 to $750 — suddenly went silent Thursday at a Congressional committee, smirking and grinning instead of answering questions. 
 
 Now facing an unrelated federal criminal indictment, the typically loquacious Shkreli refused to testify, repeatedly citing his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. 
 
 Members of Congress launched into fiery lectures directed at Shkreli, whose previous company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, came under scrutiny when it raised the price of Daraprim more than 5,000%. The pill is used to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease that afflicts people with weakened immune systems, such as those with AIDS and pregnant women. 
 
 "Drug company executives are lining their pockets at the expense of some of the most vulnerable families in our nation," U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, said. "It's not funny, Mr. Shkreli. People are dying and they're getting sicker and sicker." 
 
 The boyish-faced Shkreli sat quietly at the witness table, clasping his hands tightly and slowly rubbing his fingers together as he was lectured. He smirked several times and appeared on the verge of laughter at one point when Cummings was speaking. 
 
 After the hearing, he removed any doubt about his feelings. 
 
 "Hard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government," Shkreli said on Twitter, where he proceeded to retweet messages from several supporters. 
 
 Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, smiles while flanked by Nancy Retzlaff, chief commercial officer, during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. Shkreli invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify to the committee that is examining the prescription drug market. (Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images) 
 
 Pelted with hostile questions, Shkreli repeatedly recited a prepared statement that he would not testify on the advice of his counsel. He is facing multiple criminal securities charges over allegations that he took stock from a previous biotech company to pay off business debts and lied about the investment returns of his former hedge fund. 
 
 U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, professed to be flabbergasted at Shkreli's silence on drug price-hiking issues, telling the entrepreneur that he could testify on those matters without incriminating himself. 
 
 "I intend to follow the advice of counsel, not yours," Shkreli told Gowdy. 
 
 At one point, Shkreli's attorney, Ben Brafman, stood up in the crowd and tried to intervene. But U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the committee, quickly rejected Brafman's efforts. 
 
 "No, you are not recognized and you will be seated," Chaffetz said. 
 
 After less than an hour, Chaffetz dismissed Shkreli from the hearing since he was refusing to say anything. 
 
 In a brief press conference afterward, Brafman sought to explain Shkreli's dismissive facial expressions, saying his client was just "nervous." Shkreli did not comment during the press conference, but tweeted moments later. 
 
 In days before the hearing, he blasted Congress and made sarcastic jokes on Twitter about the subpoena he received to testify. 
 
 "I'm not going to say anything other than the 5th Amendment," he said recently. "They just want this to be a circus." 
 
 U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Georgia, the only pharmacist in Congress, said during the hearing that he supports free market principles but was "disgusted" by drug price-hiking companies. 
 
 "What was done here was different," Carter said. "Perverse business practices were employed." 
 
 The charismatic persona that Shkreli has cultivated — paying $2 million for the only copy of a new Wu Tang Clan album and setting up a web cam to film himself working — amplified the tension with Congress. 
 
 "People in my district are not on the Forbes billionaire list — they can’t buy Wu Tang Clan albums for $2 million," Cummings said. "Like many Americans, they struggle every single month to pay for the increasing cost of housing, education and health care. They live from paycheck to paycheck, and sometimes from no check to no check." 
 
 In addition to Shkreli, several other executives were also set to appear before the committee. 
 
 Howard Schiller, interim CEO of Valeant Pharmaceuticals, which has also come under fire for its business model and drug prices, cited the company's recent price-cutting deal with Walgreens as an example of its responsiveness. 
 
 "We’re listening and we’re changing," he said. "We have more to do." 
 
 Schiller pledged that any future drug price increases would be "much more modest" than the increases that enraged Congress. 
 
 Follow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1SZXS8w ||||| Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund manager and latest poster boy for Wall Street greed, now says he regrets not increasing the price of a life-saving drug by more than he already did. 
 
 Asked by an audience member at a healthcare summit hosted by Forbes on Thursday what he'd do differently if he could go back in time to before his highly criticized decision to raise the price of a 62-year-old drug, he replied: "I probably would have raised prices higher, is probably what I should have done. I could have raised it higher and made more profits for our shareholders. Which is my primary duty." 
 
 The price hike, which took a a pill of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 a piece overnight, drew a strong backlash. Daraprim was initially developed to treat toxoplasmosis, which strikes people with compromised immune systems. 
 
 The Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO went on to say, "No one wants to say it, no one's proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, capitalist system and capitalist rules, and my investors expect to me to maximize profits, not to minimize them, or go half, or go 70 percent, but to go to 100 percent of the profit curve that we're all taught in MBA class." 
 
 Last week, Turing said the list price of Daraprim would not change, but it would offer hospitals as much as 50 percent discounts. 
 
 On Tuesday, Express Scripts (ESRX) said it would partner with Imprimis Pharmaceuticals (IMMY) to within days offer a low-cost alternative to Daraprim, saying the drug had been "recently priced out of reach for people with HIV, pregnant women and others with weakened immune systems." 
 
 The goal is "to counterbalance companies like Turing and others in order to address the growing drug pricing crisis in America," Mark Baum, CEO of Imprimis, said in a statement. 
 
 A U.S. Senate committee is investigating the price increases at Turing and other drug companies, with a hearing on the issue scheduled for Dec. 9. U.S. prescription drug prices rose 13.1 percent in 2014, the largest increase since 2003, according to pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts.
– The drug company CEO called the "most hated man in America right now" by the BBC says he's misunderstood—but that he'll lower the price of Daraprim in response to the firestorm of criticism. "There were mistakes made with respect to helping people understand why we took this action," Turing Pharmaceuticals chief Martin Shkreli, who raised the price of the toxoplasmosis drug from $13.50 a pill to $750, tells NBC News. "I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people." The 32-year-old former hedge fund boss says it's "very easy to see a large drug price increase and say, 'Gosh, those people must be gouging,'" but that drug pricing is "very hard stuff" for people to understand. Shkreli admits that the drug is cheap to make, but he says the price has to cover "the quality control, the regulatory costs, and all of the other things that come with having a drug company." Shkreli is an "odious pharma executive straight out of central casting," but his company is far from the only one buying up relatively obscure drugs and massively increasing the price, writes Dan Diamond at Forbes. The same thing has happened to dozens of other drugs over the last year, and while media attention forced Shkreli to back down, "the hard part is achieving lasting reform," he writes. (A huge increase in the price of a tuberculosis drug has also been rolled back.)