Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a Senate Finance Committee hearing on 22 April 2026 that President Donald Trump uses a 'different way' of calculating drug price reductions, a defence that drew immediate ridicule from mathematicians and Democratic senators.

The testimony came as Kennedy facedquestioning from Senator Elizabeth Warrenover the administration's repeated assertion that itsTrumpRx drug pricing programmehas slashed prescription costs by as much as 600 per cent. Kennedy's attempt to justify the figure, by suggesting the president calculates percentages through an unconventional method, has since gone viral.

Kennedy appeared before theSenate Finance Committeeon 22 April 2026 for a hearing on the Department of Health and Human Services budget request for fiscal year 2027. Warren pressed him on how Trump could claim TrumpRx had cut drug prices by 600 per cent. Kennedy's response was unambiguous: 'President Trump has a different way of calculating. There's two ways of calculating percentages. If you have a £480 ($600) drug and you reduce it to £8 ($10), that's a 600 per cent reduction.'

OMFG!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."No, you imbecile. That’s a 98.33% drop. No math besides make-believe math makes it 600%.pic.twitter.com/5lmJ24WXur

That claim ismathematically incorrect. The standard formula for percentage reduction is the difference divided by the original price, multiplied by 100. Reducing a £480 ($600) drug to £8 ($10) produces a reduction of approximately 98.3 per cent, not 600. A true 600 per cent reduction applied to a £480 ($600) drug would mean the manufacturer had to pay consumers £2,400 ($3,000) to take the medication. Kennedy did not offer a formula to support the alternative calculation he attributed to Trump; he acknowledged only that Trump's method 'departs from standard calculations.'

Warren was brief in response. She told Kennedy: 'I think that means companies should be paying you to take their drugs.' Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the committee, went further in hisopening statement, calling TrumpRx 'a sweetheart deal for Big Pharma' and stating: 'There is no bigger fraud on the planet when it comes to drug costs than Donald Trump.'

The clip ofKennedy's testimony spread rapidly on social media. Kit Yates, a mathematician at the University of Bath, wrote onX: 'We've known for a while that the USA's current regime have been out for science, but I never thought they would try to mess with math! You can't just redefine how you calculate percentages.'

We've known for a while that the USA's current regime have been out for science, but I never though they would try to mess with math(s)!You can't just redefine how you calculate percentages.1/2pic.twitter.com/3jk2LPY5kJ

Professor Jeffrey S. Morris, also posting on X, put the figure in plainer terms: 'That is an absurdly ignorant statement from RFK. It is a 98% reduction, or you could say an increase from $10 to $600 would be a 5,000% increase, or a 60-fold reduction. There is no way to come up with 600% anything based on these numbers.'

That is an absurdly ignorant statement from RFK.Like you said it is a ~98% reduction, or you could say that an increase from $10 to $600 would be a 5000% increase, or you could say it is a 60-fold reduction.There is no way to come up with 600% anything based on these numbers,…

Source: International Business Times UK