‘MAGA math’: Dr Oz jumps by means of hoops – and modifications the legal guidelines of math – to elucidate Trump claims about reducing drug costs | EUROtoday

Dr Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, obtained himself right into a determined mathematical tangle making an attempt to defend President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on drug costs on Wednesday.

Appearing on NBC News’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, the previous daytime TV persona was invited to look at a montage of Trump making wildly inflated guarantees on the share by which his administration deliberate to chop the price of prescription drugs, which rose from 1,200 p.c to 1,500 p.c relying on which press occasion the president was talking at.

“Cutting drug prices by 400 percent, anything over 100 percent, wouldn’t that effectively make them free? Is that a realistic goal from the president?” Welker requested Dr Oz.

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Strictly talking, slicing costs by one hundred pc would make them free, and any discount past that will put the vendor within the nonsensical place of getting to pay folks to take their product.

Attempting to mount a proof, the administrator mentioned: “The president does the calculation by saying, ‘OK, if a drug was $100 and you reduce it to $50, it’s 100 percent cheaper because you’re taking $50 off and left with only $50, so the amount you took off the price is equal to the amount that’s left. They’re equal so it’s 100 percent.’”

In truth, decreasing a $100 merchandise to $50 would imply it’s only 50 p.c cheaper.

Pressing on with out correcting Oz, the understandably baffled Welker identified that Trump has boasted about decreasing drug costs by as much as 1,500 p.c.

“Well, if you take a drug that is $200 or $240 like we did last week and reduce it to $10, those are the numbers you’re talking about,” Oz answered, solely intensifying the environment of confusion.

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The doctor struggled with exactly the identical calculation at a White House press convention on October 16, held to advertise a brand new deal on fertility medicine, when he mentioned at one stage in his deal with: “You’ll notice, President Trump, these are discounted from $242 to $10.

“I don’t know what the math is on that. We can’t even calculate it. It’s too high to calculate.”

A discount from $242 to $10 is 95.87 p.c.

The Independent has contacted the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for additional remark.

Trump was beforehand accused of partaking in “MAGA math” earlier this yr, when a clip of him bragging about bringing down drug costs by 1,400 and 1,500 p.c was amended with a Community Note on X that learn: “Misleading news. If you reduce price by 100 percent, price becomes zero.”

The notice supplied a easy instance of a one hundred pc low cost on a $10 e book, bringing its worth to zero, and linked to an internet site providing a straightforward information to calculating reductions.