Medicines play a central role in making our health care system more sustainable. The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates how critical

medicines are in overcoming our most pressing health care challenges. At the start of the pandemic, our hospital systems were

overwhelmed, resources stretched, and death rates were growing at an alarming rate. Today, vaccines protect against the virus and

therapeutics reduce its consequences. Importantly, we also have the means to minimize the extraordinary burden that formerly

threatened to overwhelm our health care system. In fact, since the introduction of novel COVID-19 vaccines, the U.S. vaccination

program is estimated to have saved 2 million lives and averted up to 17 million hospitalizations.