In his final State of the Union, President Obama called on the scientific community to “make America the country that cures cancer once and for all.” Congress has since responded, increasing funding for such research. While this is good in the abstract, it is unclear that it is an objectively correct and productive use of government funds. This article proposes measures by which to analyze the costs and benefits of the government’s cancer research funding expenditures. Having done so, the article then offers specific policy recommendations incorporating further costbenefit analysis to realize the President’s aim, namely: weighting grant applications by the cost of the cancer being addressed, increasing the number of grants funded and creating a revolving fund for future funding, converting NIH spending from discretionary to mandatory, expending cooperative partnerships, and collecting more data on grant applications themselves for further analysis.