Why are Anagathics so expensive in character creation?

Question

They costs about Cr 700,000 each term!

How can anyone afford this from benefits (or be in great Medical Debt)? Or maybe it is a mistake in PDF?

It's not worth it at all. Also it requires a SOC10+ roll and player need to make two Survival roll instead of one.

Second, the drugs cost 1D × Cr200,000 for each term the Traveller uses the drugs. These costs are paid out of the Traveller’s eventual cash benefits. If the Traveller cannot pay these bills, they go into debt — see Medical Debt on page 49.

I found this in Drugs section (page 109 Core Book):

Anagathics (TL15): These slow the user’s ageing process. Synthetic anagathics become possible at TL15, but there are natural spices and other rare compounds that have comparable effects. Anagathics are illegal or heavily controlled on many worlds. One dose must be taken each month to maintain the anti-ageing effect. They cost Cr20000 per dose.

Here it costs only Cr 20,000, but per month it would be Cr 960,000 per term (4 years).

Answer 1

As far as I remember, the high price of anagathics is largely a matter of creating pressure on the PCs to spend money, go adventure, and generally to preventing infinite lifepaths. If anything, adventurers in medical debt are incentivised to keep on adventuring and earning money - money they spend on paying off the debt and not on other goodies. Though of course such things can take a life of their own between editions, especially once they become part of a setting's canon.

As for the price difference in the total cost, there's nothing wrong with that. First, on average the cost at character creation is less than afterwards (3½×200,000 < 960,000), contrary to the implicit comparison in the question title; it takes a roll of 5-6 to exceed the piecemeal/flat value. Second, the character creation is necessarily a zoomed-out, abstracted affair, so the differences in the final price may represent all sorts of shortcuts successfully taken or extra complications suffered while trying to obtain the drugs that are still too fine-grained to examine in full detail.