According to a paper Milkovich et al. (2023)the answer is'No'. The authors examined FDA-approved oncology treatments between 2015 and 2020 and determined average wholesale prices from the Red Book. Drugs are divided into three categories: (i) first approval of a compound with a new mechanism of action, (ii) approval of the next category regardless of tumor type, and (iii) subsequent approval of the same drug. Using this approach, they found:
A total of 224 anticancer drugs out of 119 drugs were approved, with a median annual cost of $196 000 (IQR, $170 000 to $277 000). Gene and viral therapies are the most expensive (median $448,000) [IQR, $448 000-$479 000]), followed by small molecule therapeutics (median $244,000) [IQR, $203 000-$321 000), and biologics (median, $185 000 [IQR, $148 000-$195 000]). There were no significant differences in costs between first-in-class, next-in-class, and subsequent approvals of approved drugs.
The complete article is here.
