There's way cheaper options than that, a lot of free ones even. But going by your question, I don't think you even know what an "app" is.
As with everything, programs you use don't matter. It's what you do with them. There's at least 100 different programs to let you make android apps/games. There's several hundred programs that let you create the art, and another few hundred programs for writing the code. None of em are strictly better than others.
If you have 0 knowledge about this, Game Maker isn't too bad, but it's a LOT more expensive than just writing your own basic engine.
Android SDK lets you do this, make your art in any free graphics program, write your code in the Android SDK version of Eclipse. This option is completely free.
An even better free option:
http://phonegap.com/Free and when your game is finished, it works on iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and Ubuntu. With minimal work, it'll also work on Windows, Mac and all versions of Linux.
To make it as easy to develop as Game Maker, you'll need a separate engine to use, again there's a bunch of options.
So my opinion? PhoneGap + a game making tool beats the hell out of Game Maker for free.