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Dr Mehmet OzThe administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in an effort to defend the President, got himself into a desperate mathematical dilemma donald trumpThe rhetoric continues drug prices On Wednesday.
visible on nbc news‘S meet the Press with Kristen WelkerThe former TV personality was invited to watch a montage of Trump making wildly inflated promises on the percentage his administration planned to cut the cost of pharmaceuticals, which ranged from 1,200 percent to 1,500 percent depending on which press event the president was speaking at.
“Cutting drug prices by 400 percent, anything over 100 percent, wouldn’t that effectively free them up? Is that a realistic goal for the president?” Welker asked Dr. Oz.
Strictly speaking, a 100 percent price cut would make them free, and any cut beyond that would put the seller in the futile position of having to pay people to pick up their product.
Attempting to clarify, the administrator said: “The President does the calculation by saying, ‘Well, if a drug was $100 and you cut it down to $50, it’s 100 percent cheaper because you’re taking $50 off and there’s only $50 left, so the price you took off is equal to the amount saved. They’re equal so it’s 100 percent.'”
In fact, reducing a $100 item to $50 would mean it is only 50 percent cheaper.
Moving on without correcting Oz, an astonished Welker pointed out that Trump has claimed to reduce drug prices by 1,500 percent.
“Well, if you take a $200 or $240 drug like we did last week and cut it down to $10, those are the numbers you’re talking about,” Oz replied, adding to the confusion.
That’s exactly the calculation doctors grappled with when they spoke at a White House press conference Oct. 16 to promote a new deal on fertility drugs. Said At one point in his address: “You’ll see, President Trump, these have been discounted from $242 to $10.
“I don’t know what the math is on this. We can’t even calculate it. It’s too much to calculate.”
The decrease from $242 to $10 is 95.87 percent.
Independent The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has been contacted for further comment.
Trump was accused of involvement earlier also “MAGA Math” Earlier this year, a clip of him boasting about reducing drug prices by 1,400 and 1,500 percent was released. Revised with community notes The text on the
The note offered a simple example of a 100 percent discount on a $10 book, reducing its price to zero, and linked to a website offering it. A handy guide to calculating rebates,