CBO's drug development model is intended to help the Congress understand how legislative proposals would affect the development of new drugs. The model allows the agency to provide information about drug development with its estimates of the budgetary costs of legislation.

CBO is updating its drug development model to address feedback from the Congress, responses to CBO's December 2023 "Call for New Research" blog post, and other input. The agency continues to seek input to improve the model. This update constitutes a significant advance in the agency's ability to analyze the development of new drugs—by now accounting for correlation across phases of drug development and differences in drugs' characteristics.