Old Cancer Drug Gets 1,227% Price Hike in Frugal U.K.

The chemotherapy known as busulfan is more than six decades old, and part of doctors’ standard arsenal against leukemia. It’s not scarce, and by all accounts, it should be dirt cheap. Instead, its price has soared like that of a prized antique.

Busulfan cost 1,227 percent more last year than in 2011 in the U.K. And it isn’t the only medicine whose price has unexpectedly surged in one of the world’s most tightly-controlled markets for health spending. Melphalan, a chemotherapy in use for ovarian cancer since the 1950s, had a 315 percent cost increase in the same period, according to researchers at the University of Liverpool, who reviewed 89 products.