At an April 22, 2026 Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren grilled HHS Secretary RFK Jr. about Trump's repeated claims that he reduced drug prices by “300, 400, 500, even 600 percent.” Kennedy's defense: “President Trump has a different way of calculating. There's two ways of calculating percentages.”
A 600% reduction is mathematically impossible — it would require pharmaceutical companies to pay consumers $3,000 per prescription. A drug dropping from $600 to $10 is a 98.3% reduction. Mathematician Kit Yates (University of Bath): “You can't just redefine how you calculate percentages.” Sen. Bernie Sanders: “An absurd statement. Nobody in the world believes that.”
The TrumpRx program itself is a worse deal than existing options for many patients. The Center for American Progress analyzed all 54 medications on TrumpRx.gov and found genuinely new lower prices on exactly one drug (Cetrotide, a fertility medication). Nearly one-third of listed drugs had cheaper generic alternatives that TrumpRx doesn't disclose.
Specific examples from Warren: Protonix (heartburn) costs $200 on TrumpRx versus $16 at Costco. A heart arrhythmia drug costs $336 on TrumpRx versus $12 generic at Costco. Patients have roughly a 1-in-4 chance of paying more through TrumpRx than alternatives.
FactCheck.org found only 16 companies covering 43 drugs participated, median brand-name drug list prices actually rose 4% in 2026, and 85% of insured Americans would pay less through their existing insurance than TrumpRx cash prices.