OnCo
ideasIdea

Pay-for-cure contracts: instalment payments for curative therapies contingent on durable remission

For very expensive one-time treatments such as CAR-T, pay in instalments over years and stop paying if the cancer comes back, so price tracks the cure actually delivered.

One-time curative-intent therapies (CAR-T, gene therapies, potentially in vivo cell therapy) carry prices that health systems struggle to absorb up front and that are not tied to durability. Outcome-based agreements exist in a few countries. The proposal is a standard contract framework: payments spread over five years, annual instalments contingent on registry-verified remission, portability across payers when patients move, and public reporting of durability, with the same framework offered in middle-income countries at tiered prices.

Hypothesis
Pay-for-cure contracts increase the number of patients treated with curative therapies by a third at the same budget and shift manufacturer investment toward durability of response.
Rationale
Aligning payment with the outcome that matters removes the payer's risk on unproven durability and rewards manufacturers for cures rather than infusions.
What would test it
Implement for CAR-T in two national payers; compare patients treated, budget impact and durability data quality against payers using up-front payment.
Maturity
early clinical
Who has to act
payer
Cost to try
Medium ($1M to $50M)
Years to first evidence
4
Bottlenecks it attacks
  • Prices and value · New cancer drugs routinely cost over $150,000 a year, often for months of benefit. Systems cannot afford them and patients go bankrupt.
  • Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains · The system pays the same for a drug that adds two months as for a cure, so companies race to copy rather than to cure.

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