Buy out the patent on a curative cancer drug and sell it at generic prices
Governments could pay a company a large one-off sum for the rights to a highly effective cancer drug, then let anyone make it cheaply for everyone.
Patent buyouts (proposed by Kremer and others) replace monopoly pricing with a lump sum reflecting the drug's social value, after which the drug enters generic competition. Cancer drugs with large survival benefits in common cancers (for example adjuvant immunotherapy or a highly effective targeted agent) are candidates where the deadweight loss of high prices is largest. The proposal is a pilot fund, capitalised by a coalition of governments and philanthropies, that runs an auction-based valuation and buys out one or two oncology patents for global generic supply, with a prize element for the developer.
- 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.
- Most of the world has almost no cancer care · Seven in ten cancer deaths happen in low- and middle-income countries, where radiotherapy, pathology, surgery and drugs are scarce.
Pages like this
not linked directly; found by shared links- IdeaA joint price negotiation bloc for middle-income countries, modelled on Beneluxa
Shares Prices and value, Most of the world has almost no cancer care.
- IdeaGrant extra exclusivity only in exchange for binding low prices in poorer countries
Shares Prices and value, Most of the world has almost no cancer care.
- IdeaTie WHO essential-medicines listing to a published tiered price and supply pledge
Shares Prices and value, Most of the world has almost no cancer care.
- IdeaMedicines Patent Pool licences for every patented cancer drug on the WHO list
Shares Prices and value, Most of the world has almost no cancer care.
- IdeaSubscription pricing for checkpoint inhibitors: fixed national fee, unlimited use
Shares Prices and value, Most of the world has almost no cancer care.
- IdeaA Gavi-style pooled purchaser for radiotherapy equipment and service
Shares Prices and value, Most of the world has almost no cancer care.
- IdeaPooled procurement and voluntary licensing for essential cancer medicines in low-income countries
Shares Prices and value, Most of the world has almost no cancer care.
- IdeaAn advance market commitment for PD-1 biosimilars for lower-income countries
Shares Prices and value, Most of the world has almost no cancer care.