At an Aug. 31 Oval Office announcement, President Donald Trump described agreements with nine additional pharmaceutical manufacturers.

“In total, these agreements are projected to save Americans more than $600 billion over a very short period of time,” Trump said, according to CBS News.

The published figures do not assign those nine agreements $600 billion in savings.

The White House fact sheet says the agreements will give every state Medicaid program access to most-favored-nation prices on products from the nine companies. It says this will produce “billions of dollars” in savings.

The fact sheet also cites $600 billion. But that figure covers the broader collection of most-favored-nation drug deals. Its stated period is the next decade.

Thus:

  • Nine new agreements: billions in projected savings, with no precise public estimate.
  • Broader drug-pricing effort: nearly $600 billion in modeled savings.
  • Time required by the model: ten years.

Ten years may pass quickly. It remains ten years.

The $600 billion figure comes from a May analysis by the Council of Economic Advisers, prepared when 17 manufacturer deals had been announced. It combined $529 billion in prospective domestic savings involving newly launched drugs with $64.3 billion in Medicaid savings involving existing drugs.

Together, that is $593.3 billion. Or nearly $600 billion.

These are modeled savings, not money already saved. The outcome depends on assumptions about prices, drug launches, use and implementation. FactCheck.org has also noted uncertainties involving the model and the voluntary terms of the agreements.

The $64.3 billion Medicaid figure is not a score for the nine latest deals, either. NBC News described it as a speculative estimate for the administration’s broader effort over ten years. NBC also reported that the effect on patients and governments remains unclear because Medicaid already receives substantial drug discounts under existing law, while most beneficiaries pay little out of pocket for prescriptions.

None of this establishes that the agreements will produce no savings. It establishes that no public estimate says the nine new agreements alone will save $600 billion.

A projection is not a receipt. It is a collection of assumptions with a dollar sign attached.

This one also has a ten-year calendar.