President Obama is proposing "a major new initiative to develop drugs tailored to the genetic characteristics of individual patients, but he expresses deep concern about the costs of such specialty medicines for consumers and for the Medicare program," reports Robert Pear in April 27 New York Times.
He has asked Congress to let Medicare officials negotiate prices with drug manufacturers — a practice explicitly forbidden by current law. At the same time, the administration, through the National Institutes of Health, is off and running with its “precision medicine” initiative, meant to develop personalized therapies like those now on the market to treat illnesses like cancer and cystic fibrosis at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. Prices over $50,000 or $100,000 a year are not unusual.
.... If the initiative is successful, scientists said, it could lead to new diagnostic tests and treatments for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and other illnesses. One-third of the money would be used to seek cancer treatments using genetic information.Obama Proposes That Medicare Be Given the Right to Negotiate the Cost of Drugs by Robert Pear, New York Times, April 27 2015.