Budgeting novel anti-cancer drugs: with which resources?

Recently developed drugs are ten to one hundred fold costlier than the chem otherapies of the past while the number of eligible patients and the averag e duration of treatments are ever increasing. The combined effort of these trends makes budgeting a daunting task in particular for hospitals with bud getary allocation. Balancing budgets became difficult with the arrival of t axanes, but innovative therapies based an biotechnological advances will fu rther increase the financial slide. Hospital running costs can not be infin itely reduced. Therefore, new rules that govern the financing of innovative therapies become mandatory and budgetary allocations based on DRG evaluati ons will no longer be feasible.