Yves here. The situation with Trump may seem dire, but it’s even more troubling than it appears. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., much like several Trump appointees, finds himself in hot water while attempting to defend Trump’s evidently erroneous claims rather than distancing himself from them. At the center of this discussion are Trump’s assertions about drug price reductions that are so exaggerated they would imply the government is paying patients to take their medications.
The focus on Trump’s questionable arithmetic overshadows a crucial point raised by Elizabeth Warren: that the TrumpRx initiative often lists drugs at prices significantly higher than current market rates.
By Brad Reed, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
On Wednesday, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attempted to rationalize President Donald Trump’s mathematically implausible claims regarding prescription drug prices, suggesting that the president has a unique approach to calculating percentages.
During a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren challenged Kennedy regarding Trump’s repeated and false assertions that he has reduced prescription drug prices by as much as 600%, which would imply that pharmaceutical companies are essentially paying consumers to take their medications.
“President Trump has his own way of calculating,” Kennedy replied. “There are two ways to calculate percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.”
RFK Jr: “President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” pic.twitter.com/MjDNADqc8p
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 22, 2026
In reality, such a decrease would signify a 98.3% reduction—less than one-sixth of Trump’s claims. A 600% decrease would imply that drug manufacturers are paying patients $3,000 each time they pick up their prescription.
Kit Yates, a mathematician from the University of Bath, expressed disbelief at Kennedy’s attempts to reinterpret basic arithmetic.
“We have known for some time that the current U.S. administration has been dismissive of science, but I never anticipated they would also distort math!” Yates noted on social media. “You cannot simply redefine how to calculate percentages.”
Moreover, Warren highlighted Kennedy’s apparent lack of fundamental math skills while pointing out how the TrumpRx website misleads consumers into believing they are being offered bargains on drugs that can be found elsewhere in generic forms.
For instance, Warren cited an example where TrumpRx lists a brand-name heartburn medication for $200, while the same generic drug is available at Costco for just $16. She also mentioned a heart arrhythmia drug priced at $336 on TrumpRx, although a generic alternative is offered at Costco for only $12.
Warren further revealed that, by allowing certain brand-name drugs on the TrumpRx site, pharmaceutical companies have received exemptions from the president’s 100% tariffs on imported patented medicines.
“Consider this: Big Pharma profits immensely from tariff relief by listing their drugs on TrumpRx, while still failing to lower prices on many of these medications,” she asserted. “That is a fantastic deal for Big Pharma.”
Warren’s appraisal of TrumpRx’s pricing strategy aligns with a March report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), which found that the president’s prescription drug website genuinely offered lower prices on only “one” of the 54 medications listed.
Furthermore, CAP discovered that nearly one-third of the drugs featured on the TrumpRx website had cheaper generic alternatives, which were not mentioned at all.
In December, Reuters reported that at least 350 branded medications are slated for price hikes in 2026, including “vaccines for Covid, RSV, and shingles,” as well as the prominent cancer drug Ibrance.
Later in the hearing, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) mocked Kennedy for claiming that under Trump’s administration, “the American people are now paying the lowest costs in the world for prescription drugs, rather than the highest.”
“That is an utterly absurd statement,” Sanders affirmed. “No one in the world believes that.”
