The President of the United States has consistently asserted that his initiatives aim to slash prescription drug costs by up to 600 percent.
This assertion defies mathematical logic.
In a conversation held in the Oval Office, Kennedy sought to clarify the President’s calculations.
He recounted, “A Democratic senator argued that it’s mathematically impossible for a drug to drop by 600 percent,” he noted.
“I responded, ‘If a drug initially costs $100 and increases to $600, that’s a 600 percent increase. Conversely, if it falls from $600 back to $100, that would equate to a 600 percent reduction,’” he explained.
However, both Trump and Kennedy are mistaken. A reduction beyond 100 percent of something is not feasible, as 100 percent constitutes the entirety of the item in question.
The senator Kennedy was referencing was Elizabeth Warren, who grilled him at a committee hearing yesterday.
She criticised Trump’s bad maths on the topic of drug prices.
“Which I think means companies should be paying you to take their drugs,” Warren said.
Kennedy defended Trump’s maths at the hearing.
“President Trump has a different way of calculating,” he said.
“There’s two ways of calculating percentages.”
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