During a Senate hearing, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended President Trump‘s claim that his Trump RX prescription discount website had reduced d**g prices by as much as 600%, offering an unusual explanation for how that figure was reached.
The exchange was prompted by a senator who raised questions about the math behind the 600% figure. The senator pointed out that if a d**g’s price is reduced by more than 100%, companies would effectively be paying consumers to take their products.
“600%, which I think means companies should be paying you to take their d**gs,” the senator said, before asking Kennedy directly about the cost of a specific treatment.
The d**g in question was Protonix, a heartburn medic ation. A 30-day supply of the brand-name version is listed on Trump RX for $200. The senator asked Kennedy whether he knew the cost of the identical generic version, pantoprazole, at Costco.
Kennedy did not answer the question directly. Instead, he offered a defense of the percentage calculation method.
“President Trump has a different way of calculating,” Kennedy said. “There are two ways of calculating percentage. If you have a $600 d**g and you reduce it to $10, that is a 600% reduction.”
The senator pressed Kennedy on whether he knew the price of the d**g at Costco. Kennedy said he did not.
The senator then provided the answer: pantoprazole costs $16 at Costco for a 30-day supply, compared to the $200 charged for Protonix on Trump RX.
Kennedy’s explanation of the percentage calculation drew attention because the standard mathematical method for calculating a percentage reduction would place a price drop from $600 to $10 at roughly 98%, not 600%. The figure of 600% appears to have been arrived at by calculating how many times smaller the new price is compared to the old price, rather than the conventional formula for percentage decrease.
In a separate clip that circulated after the first viral exchange, RFK Jr. framed the moment as an example of critics misunderstanding the scale of price changes. “I was reminded when the president was speaking of a conversation that I had yesterday with one of the Democratic senators who was questioning me during a hearing,” Kennedy said.
He explained that the senator had been “ridiculing President Trump for his math” and arguing that it was “mathematically impossible to have a dr** drop by 600% cost which he had claimed.”
Kennedy then offered what he described as a clarifying example, attempting to justify the calculation method. “Well, if the drug was $100 and it raised the price to $600, that would be a 600% rise,” he said. “Well, if it drops from 600 to 100, that’s a 600% savings.”
He added that “the president used that mathematical device to illustrate the magnitude of the theft that has been happening.”
