Math vs. Myth– by Winston Wendell
Blue Press Journal – When it comes to economics, it feels like the current administration treats the laws of mathematics as more of a suggestion than a rule. On Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to patch up President Trump’s wild claims about prescription drug pricing, but ended up digging himself into an even deeper hole with his own calculations.
Here’s where it gets weird: President Trump has a habit of throwing out promises like price drops of “500%, 600%, or even 1,000%.” Critics, including Ed Mazza from HuffPost, have already flagged that these numbers don’t make sense. If you drop a price by 100%, the item is free. Anything above that—500% or 1,000%—means a “negative cost,” which would mean drug companies have to pay you to take their meds. Obviously, that’s not happening.
Kennedy, not letting basic logic get in the way, decided to address the confusion right in the Oval Office. While backing up the President, he shared an anecdote about a recent talk with a Democratic senator. Kennedy argued that if a drug’s price goes from $100 to $600, that’s a 600% increase—so taking it back down from $600 to $100 should count as a “600% savings.”
But his math just doesn’t work. Going from $100 to $600 is actually a 500% increase, while dropping from $600 to $100 is just about an 83% decrease. Still, Kennedy stood his ground, calling it a “mathematical device,” whatever that means.
This isn’t Kennedy’s first attempt at bending math to fit the administration’s story. Just the day before, during a Senate hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pressed him about the President’s suspicious numbers. Kennedy claimed Trump uses a different method for the math, saying that moving from $600 down to $10—a real 98% drop—should be called a 600% decrease.
President Trump took this creative math in stride during Thursday’s event, shrugging off mathematical details entirely. “There are two ways of calculating it,” he said, as if it’s just about how you want to spin the numbers—60% or 600%, take your pick. Also he seemed to nod off at times during Kennedy’s weird expiation. So who wouldn’t.
All this numbers acrobatics is happening as the White House aggressively promotes its drug pricing plan. At the same Thursday event, they announced a deal with biotech firm Regeneron, which combines price cuts for certain groups with tariff reductions for the company.
Outside these big news moments, the administration is still pushing its “TrumpRx” website—a platform that’s supposed to offer cheaper prescriptions. That site hasn’t escaped criticism either. People have pointed out that its catalog is tiny, and it often overlooks cheaper generics you can find at regular pharmacies.
The administration keeps arguing that its cost-cutting efforts are meaningful, but clinging to “alternative math” makes it look like the steepest drops are actually happening in logic, not in the price of drugs.
Blue Press Journal 