ideasIdea

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.

Hypothesis

A buyout of a widely used oncology drug increases the number of patients treated worldwide at least fivefold within three years at a total public cost lower than five years of monopoly spend in high-income markets alone.

Rationale

For drugs with proven large benefit, the monopoly period wastes lives without serving its purpose of discovering whether the drug works; a lump sum preserves the innovation reward and removes the access barrier.

What would test it

Commission an independent valuation and feasibility study for two candidate drugs approaching mid-patent life, negotiate with the patent holder, and execute one buyout with global access tracking.

Maturity

speculative

Who has to act

philanthropy

Cost to try

Large (over $50M)

Years to first evidence

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.
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.

Connected

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bottlenecks

Most of the world has almost no cancer care Prices and value