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Oncologists who advise payment authorities in Canada or elsewhere have good reasons to worry about which new therapies to fund. The last 6 or so years have seen the arrival of numerous drugs costing tens of thousands of US dollars per patient annually. Most of these drugs exploit biotechnology methods to target biological processes with exceptional
specificity, often leading to therapeutics that for practical purposes, are nearly unique in their clinical effects. Clinical and financial success begets ever faster development, so we can expect many more such drugs. Moreover, combination therapy may become almost as common in oncology as in HIV therapy, raising the possibility of treating patients with more than one $20,000 per year drug.

John E. Calfee is a resident scholar at AEI.

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