Rewriting the human code of life: Will we be able to afford the medical advances that gene editing and AI are fast making possible?

We are now in the second great wave of the genetic revolution, not defined by reading the human code of life, but by rewriting it. In recent years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved more than a dozen gene-editing and cell-based therapies.

Yet as transformative as this moment may be, the question ahead is not just how far genetic medicine can go, but how we can afford to go there. Each past revolution—from protein therapeutics to genome sequencing to CRISPR gene editing—expanded our ability to intervene in biology. The next must redefine how we pay for the cures we create.

The promise of gene therapy comes at an extraordinary price. Some treatments cost more than $3 million per patient. … While these prices reflect decades of research and production complexity, they also reveal deep flaws in how health systems value innovation.

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Traditional pricing models do not work well for one-time cures. The U.S. fee-for-service system pays for each dose or procedure, which does not fit treatments that can eliminate disease.

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