Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was called out by California Governor Gavin Newsom after Kennedy attempted to defend President Donald Trump's claims that drug prices have been cut by "600%."
Kennedy appeared before federal lawmakers in a series of hearings, where he pushed back on criticism over measles outbreaks and declining vaccination rates while promoting initiatives he said would make health care more affordable.
He also defended Trump’s proposed 2027 budget, which increases defense spending while cutting more than 12% from the Department of Health and Human Services.
One moment that went viral was the moment Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed him on Trump's mathematically impossible claim he lowered the price of prescription drugs by as much as 600%.
Warren referenced Trump’s announcement of an effort to reduce U.S. drug costs, which includes launching a “TrumpRx” website where consumers can purchase discounted medications and securing a sweeping deal with Pfizer to lower the prices of many of its products.
Warren remarked:
“President Trump and the Republicans slashed health care for millions of families. The president pitched his TrumpRx website as the answer for Americans who are worried about health care costs."
"He claims that TrumpRx has reduced prices by as much as 600%. Six hundred percent, which I think means companies should be paying you to take their drugs.”
To that, Kennedy replied:
“President Trump has a different way of calculating. There’s two ways of calculating percentage. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction."
You can watch what happened in the video below.
That is absolutely wrong because there aren't multiple ways to calculate percentages despite how Kennedy framed it. For example, cutting the price of a $600 drug to $10 is roughly a 98% decrease. By contrast, a “600% decrease” would imply a price of negative $3,000—meaning the seller would actually be paying the buyer, which makes no practical sense.
Newsom summed it pretty succinctly after a clip of Kennedy's remarks went viral on social media:
"'A different way of calculating percentages' Also known as …. wrong."
You can see his post below.
Others also called Kennedy out.
The Trump administration is mathematically challenged.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was widely mocked several months ago after she repeated Trump's impossible claims that he got pharmaceutical companies to lower their drug prices by more than 100%, saying they are "going to be lowered by “200, 300, 100%.”
Even if Trump’s policy, which is dependent on cooperation from reluctant pharmaceutical companies and speculative future regulatory moves, were to result in a sharp drop in drug prices, it’s mathematically impossible to cut prices by 500% to 1,500%.
Once again, even if every drug were somehow made free, that would represent a 100% reduction. Anything beyond that would mean Americans were being paid to take their medications rather than purchasing them.
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