{"id":4617,"date":"2025-10-24T14:55:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T18:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/?p=4617"},"modified":"2026-03-25T10:23:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:23:13","slug":"maga-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/2025\/10\/24\/maga-math\/","title":{"rendered":"MAGA Math"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"An article<\/a> by Lee Moran in Huffpost is rather remarkable.\u00a0 Apparently someone failed grade-school math.\u00a0 I wonder how he got through medical school, especially the pharmacology course.<\/p>\n

\u201cNBC News\u2019 Kristen Welker on Wednesday asked Mehmet Oz \u2014 the former talk show host and heart surgeon who now runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services \u2014 about President Donald Trump\u2019s repeated claim, mockingly dubbed \u201cMAGA Math<\/a>,\u201d that he\u2019ll get pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices by more than 100%. <\/p>\n

Welker aired a montage of Trump making the boasts, including promises to slash costs \u201cby 1,200, 1,300, 1,400, 1,500%,\u201d even though, as critics have repeatedly pointed out, it would essentially make medications free or even see people being paid to receive them.<\/p>\n

Then Welker asked Oz the obvious: \u201cCutting drug prices by 400%, anything over 100%, wouldn\u2019t that effectively make them free? Is that a realistic goal from the president?\u201d<\/p>\n

Oz creatively replied: \u201cThe president does the calculation by saying, \u2018OK, if a drug was $100 and you reduce it to $50, it\u2019s 100% cheaper because you\u2019re taking $50 off and left with only $50, so the amount you took off the price is equal to the amount that\u2019s left. They\u2019re equal, so it\u2019s 100%.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Welker pointed out that Trump has boasted about reducing drug prices by up to 1,500%. Oz fired back: \u201cWell, 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\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What?<\/p>\n

He then pivoted to talking about how important it was to reduce drug prices.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article by Lee Moran in Huffpost is rather remarkable.\u00a0 Apparently someone failed grade-school math.\u00a0 I wonder how he got through medical school, especially the pharmacology course. \u201cNBC News\u2019 Kristen Welker on Wednesday asked Mehmet Oz \u2014 the former talk show host and heart surgeon who now runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[209,287,67],"class_list":["post-4617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-voices","tag-innumeracy","tag-mehmet-oz","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4618,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4617\/revisions\/4618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}