‘President Trump has a different way of calculating’: RFK Jr. defended a mathematically impossible drug price claim and somehow made it worse

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday to defend President Trump’s claim that his administration has cut prescription drug prices by as much as 600 percent. The claim has been repeatedly fact-checked and found to be false. Kennedy’s attempt to explain the math only made things more confusing.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts quickly pushed back. She pointed out that using inflated percentage figures could mislead patients about how much they would actually save. “Which I think means companies should be paying you to take their drugs,” Warren said about Trump’s “600 percent” claim, reports Newsweek.

Kennedy told the committee that there are two ways of calculating percentages. “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600 percent reduction,” he said, suggesting that Trump’s math simply uses a different method. But by any standard calculation, reducing a $600 drug to $10 is a 98 percent decrease, not a 600 percent reduction.

RFK Jr.’s defense of Trump’s drug price math exposed real problems with the administration’s TrumpRx program

The Trump administration has promoted its “Trump Rx” initiative as a major step forward in lowering the cost of brand-name prescription drugs. But an Associated Press fact check from August 2025 found that Trump’s repeated claims of cutting drug prices by 300, 400, 500, and even 600 percent were entirely false. A price reduction of more than 100 percent would mean patients are being paid to take the drugs, which is not mathematically possible.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also tried to explain the math during a Fox News interview last December. He claimed that reducing a drug from $100 to $13 was a 700 percent decrease. When host John Roberts pointed out that a 600 percent price cut is impossible, Lutnick laughed and said “no,” but did not give a clear or correct explanation, according to The Independent.

Trump has made similarly eyebrow-raising statements in other areas too, such as when he warned about the future of the U.S. Olympic team while pushing new regulations on collegiate sports. Since launching the “Trump Rx” program earlier this year, Trump has repeatedly said that drug prices are falling by “300, 400, 500, even 600 percent.”

This claim has been fact-checked and debunked multiple times, but the administration has continued to use these figures publicly. Trump has also drawn criticism in other political areas, including his attacks on certain conservative Supreme Court justices whom he accused of going “weak, stupid, and bad.”

Senator Warren also accused the administration of misleading consumers in a more direct way. She pointed out that one drug available on TrumpRx for $200 is actually cheaper at Costco. Warren said the odds of paying more at TrumpRx than at Costco are 1 in 4. Kennedy responded by saying that Congress has more power to negotiate drug savings than HHS does, but Warren rejected that explanation.

Kennedy was unable to give a clear or convincing defense of either the percentage claims or the TrumpRx pricing. The administration has continued to stand by its numbers despite repeated corrections from fact-checkers and pushback from lawmakers on both sides.