President Donald Trump’s claims about prescription drug costs make no mathematical sense. But his crew – together with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week – retains straining to defend them.
Since final 12 months, Trump has asserted that he has lower or will lower prescription drug costs by numbers like “500%,” “600%,” “1,000%,” “1,400%” and “1,500%.” That is mathematically unattainable, as NCS and others have repeatedly famous. A decline of 100% would imply medicine had change into cost-free, so a decline of lots of of p.c or extra would imply Americans could be getting paid substantial cash to accumulate their drugs.
That isn’t occurring. But that is the “President Trump is right” administration, through which Trump’s aides and appointees usually stretch to defend even his most laughably inaccurate claims. And so, even after a lot of fact-checks and on-line jokes about Trump’s fictional percentages – and even after Trump has implicitly made clear he’s conscious these numbers are being challenged – his allies have tried to painting them as cheap.
Here are three makes an attempt they’ve made because the fall.
The most up-to-date effort got here from Kennedy on Wednesday and Thursday. Kennedy used unhealthy math to attempt to justify Trump’s unhealthy math.
At a Senate listening to on Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren talked about Trump’s claims about “600%” reductions in drug costs. Kennedy responded, “President Trump has a different way of calculating. If – there’s two ways of calculating percentage. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.”
That is just not true. It’s a 98.3% discount, interval. There is not any mathematically legitimate manner of calculating percentages that might make it a 600% discount.
Kennedy’s comment drew appreciable mockery on social media. But he made the same remark at a White House occasion with Trump on Thursday – and deployed extra incorrect numbers whereas attempting to assist his case.
Kennedy, apparently alluding to his alternate with Warren, said he had on Wednesday informed a Democratic senator who challenged Trump’s claims of a 600% discount in drug costs: “Well, if the drug was $100, and it raised the price to $600, that would be a 600% rise. Well, if it drops from $600 to $100, that’s a 600% savings.”
“That’s right,” Trump interjected as Kennedy was explaining. But it’s not.
An enhance from $100 to $600 is definitely a 500% enhance, not a 600% enhance. And a drop from $600 to $100 is an 83.3% discount, not a 600% discount. Kennedy claimed that Trump was utilizing a “mathematical device,” however there’s no legitimate mathematical technique that produces his numbers.
Trump added moments later that whereas he has taken “a lot of heat” for claiming 500%, 600% and 700% reductions, “We also say sometimes 50%, 60%; different kind of calculation – 70, 80 and 90%.” He conceded, “And people understand that better.” But he added, wrongly: “But there are two ways of calculating it.” He then mentioned, “It doesn’t make any difference,” since even declines of 60% and extra could be unprecedented, however then continued, “But it’s also 500, 600, 700 depending on the way you want to look at it. So, the way you word the calculation – it’s either one.”
It’s not.
Another prime Trump well being official, Dr. Mehmet Oz, tried a distinct tactic at an occasion with the president in October: dodging Trump’s dodgy percentages by declaring, incorrectly, that the decline between $242 and $10 is so massive that the share decline can’t even be acknowledged.
Trump had said on the occasion: “Drug prices are coming down 400%, 200%, 600%, numbers that nobody’s ever seen before.” He then added, “Five hundred, 600, 800%, in some cases even more than that. It’s hard to believe.”
Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spoke after Trump. Oz made a declare concerning the value of 1 frequent fertility drug being decreased from $242 to $10, then mentioned, “I don’t know what the math is on that. We can’t even calculate it. It’s a lot. It’s too high to calculate without a more studied approach.”
But… you simply want a number of seconds with a calculator, not intensive examine. It’s a 95.9% discount.
Oz was pressed about Trump’s wildly inaccurate percentages in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker days later. He provided his personal inaccurate calculation in response.
“The president does the calculation by saying, ‘Okay, if a drug was $100 and you reduce it to $50, it’s 100% cheaper, because you’re taking $50 off and left with only $50. So the amount you took off the price is equal to the amount that’s left. They’re equal, so it’s 100%.’”
No. Whatever Trump and Oz might imagine, lowering the value of a drug from $100 to $50 is a 50% lower, not a 100% lower.
When Welker pressed Oz by noting that Trump had claimed a “1,500%” lower in one of many video clips she had performed for Oz, not a mere 100% lower, Oz mentioned, “Well, if you take a drug that is $200 – or $240 like we did last week – and reduce it to $10, those are the numbers you’re talking about.”
Nope. You’re solely speaking a few 1,500% lower when you’re utilizing phony math.
In September, NCS asked the White House to clarify Trump’s claims that drug costs have been going to say no between 1,000% to 1,500%.
Spokesperson Kush Desai responded within the method the White House communications crew often does when requested a few falsehood from the president: by ignoring the precise inaccuracy and declaring that the president is correct a few associated however completely different level.
Desai mentioned: “President Trump has correctly identified how Americans pay several times more for the same exact drugs as their peers in other wealthy nations. The Administration is committed to ensuring that drug companies make wealthy countries pay fairer rates for drugs and stop relying on Americans to subsidize the vast majority of global pharma research and development.”
When NCS pressed the White House to particularly tackle Trump’s promised “1,000%” lower, his crew responded solely on situation of anonymity. This time, an official mentioned that they had an instance: in 2023, a sure drug was listed for $521 within the US versus simply $45 in Australia, so the US value was roughly 1,000% greater.
But lowering the US value of this drug from $521 to $45 could be a 91.4% lower, not a 1,000% lower. If the president wished to say that some medicine price 1,000% extra within the US than in different nations, he may merely say that.