US President Donald Trump on Thursday reiterated his claim that prescription drug prices have fallen by more than 100%, a mathematically impossible assertion, while defending what he described as a “different way” of calculating the cuts.Speaking at an event to announce a deal with drugmaker Regeneron, Trump said his administration had cut drug costs by “500, 600 percent,” before adding that the numbers could also be framed as “50 or 60 percent” depending on how you calculate. “People understand it better,” he said. “There are two ways to calculate it.”
However, mathematically, while prices can rise by more than 100 percent, they cannot fall by more than 100 percent without actually falling to zero or becoming negative, implying that companies will have to pay consumers for using their products.US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. echoed Trump’s defence, saying that previous steep increases in drug prices meant subsequent cuts could cut more than 100% of those gains. He cited a hypothetical example of a drug’s price rising from $100 to $600, although analysts suggest this represents a 500 percent increase, not 600 percent.“She was saying, ‘It’s mathematically impossible to reduce the cost of a drug by 600 percent,'” Kennedy Jr. said, referring to a conversation he had with Senator Elizabeth Warren at a congressional hearing.
So I said, “Well, if the drug was $100 and they raised the price to $600, that would be a 600 percent increase.” And if it goes from 600 to 100, that’s a 600 percent saving, right?’ The president used this mathematical tool to illustrate the extent of the theft that is taking place against our country and our people.
“However, the comparison is flawed. Going from $100 to $600 represents an increase of 500 percent (a profit of $500 on the original $100), and falling back to $100 means a decrease of approximately 83 percent, not 600 percent, because in both cases the change of $500 is measured against different fundamental values: $100 increase and $600 decrease.The comments come amid scrutiny from lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, who said such claims would imply that drug makers should pay consumers.Trump also made disputed assertions on other issues during the event. He said the ongoing conflict with Iran had already met his previous forecast of lasting four to six weeks, although the war would continue beyond that time frame. In addition, he revived his long-standing claim that attendance at his 2017 inauguration rivaled or exceeded Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech — a comparison widely challenged by available crowd estimates.