Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended President Donald Trump’s previous claims that he had brought drug prices down by hundreds of percentage points, but his explanation only added to the confusion.
Trump has routinely boasted that his policies have sent drug prices plummeting by a massive margin, sometimes claiming they’ve dropped by over 1,000%. Speaking from the Oval Office on Thursday, Kennedy backed up the president with a questionable calculation.
“A Democratic senator claimed it’s mathematically impossible to have a drug drop by 600%. I said, ‘Well, if the drug was $100 and it raises to $600, that would be a 600% rise. If it drops from $600 to $100, that’s a 600% savings,’” Kennedy said, garnering a verbal agreement from the president.
Many observers were quick to point out that the calculation was incorrect. To start, an increase from $100 to $600 would be a 500% increase, as the price would increase by $500.
The calculation doesn’t go both ways, however. A percentage is an expression of the total of a number, so a price can’t drop by hundreds of percentage points unless it goes into the negatives. A decrease from $600 to $100 would be a reduction of about 83%.
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Trump has a history of boasting about mathematically impossible decreases in drug prices, with the suggestion of a 600% increase among his more modest claims. In August, the president claimed he cut drug prices by “1,200%, 1,300%, and 1,400%, 1,500%.”
“I don’t mean 50%. I mean [1,400%], 1,500%,” he told reporters.
