Optimal intertemporal curative drug expenses: The case of hepatitis C in France.

We study intertemporal tradeoffs that health authorities face when considering the control of an epidemic using innovative curative medical treatments. We set up a dynamically controlled susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model for an epidemic in which patients can be asymptomatic, and we analyze the optimality conditions of the sequence of cure expenses decided by health authorities at the onset of the drug innovation process. We show that analytical conclusions are ambiguous because of their dependence on parameter values.