OUR MISSION

Building the Health Care Movement

Families USA, the longtime national, non-partisan advocate for health care consumers, is dedicated to uplifting the voice of patients and the public to impact and improve our health and health system, toward the goal of achieving high-quality, affordable health care and improved health for all.

Our work seeks to secure and expand comprehensive health coverage for all, and to make sure once covered, consumers are ensured access to timely care and a respectful and empowering experience, are protected from unfair bills, fraud and abuse, and given quality, affordable, and equitable care. Our work seeks to ensure that the health system provides the right care at the right time and place, but also how health system change and health policy reform can advance our overall public health and consumers’ financial security as much as it does their clinical health and well-being. These are These goals that are not silos but cross-connect and build on one another, to ever more ambitious goals of not just beyond just coverage, or access, or patient protection, or affordability and value, building ultimately to health and economic security and justice for all.

Families USA engages in Public policy analysis that is rooted in decades-long Hill and administration experience, movement-building organizing and advocacy, uplifting patient voices and stories with communications and issues campaigns, and convening coalitions and ongoing collaboration with state and national partners

As we advance our mission by combining policy expertise and partnerships with community, state, and national leaders, we forge transformational solutions that improve the health and health care of our nation’s families and speak to the values we all have in common.

Our anchor values infuse both how we work and what we work for, start with equity and inclusion—we believe that our health system is stronger when everyone is included, and our advocacy should include everyone as well—including taking specific steps to address specific needs of specific communities. We advocate for transparency and accountability and ultimately aspire to excellence and effectiveness. Ultimately, we seek a health system, and a health advocacy movement, fueled by people power, and partnership.

Our ability to engage everyday Americans and a broad network of stakeholders representing consumers, the health care sector, and the business sector is the mark of our success, as is our history of working with leaders from both sides of the aisle to tackle the health care problems facing the nation. Congress, federal agencies, and congressional staff rely on our sophisticated, expert advice to understand current policy and to develop new ideas.

We have deep, longstanding relationships with a diverse cadre of consumer leaders, advocates, and partner organizations in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Our relationships with consumer leaders and grassroots activists across the country. These relationships cut across “red states”, “blue states” and “purple states” as well as rural and urban communities.

We do not stand alone in our work. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the individuals and families whose voices we seek to uplift not just as another stakeholder, but as what should be the central point of the health system, and of any health policy or reform–to serve patients and the public.

OUR FOCUS AREAS

The STRATEGIC GOALS for Families USA each build toward the ultimate goal of health and economic security, equity, and justice for all.

Securing and Expanding Comprehensive COVERAGE

• Making health insurance more accessible, affordable, and administratively simple if not automatic.
• Defending and improving Medicaid, Medicare, and the ACA Marketplaces, as well as employer-based and commercial coverage, including by providing affordability assistance for coverage and care.
• Improving the benefits and reducing out-of-pocket costs in both public and private coverage. Ensure coverage is comprehensive to prevent underinsurance, especially regarding benefits like dental and mental health, and with regard to cost-sharing and deductibles.
• Removing barriers to coverage, from income to immigration status, and moving toward the vision of universal coverage, where health care is not a privilege but a right.

Improving Consumer PROTECTION, ACCESS, and the Overall Experience

• Ensuring timely and easy access to medically necessary care, without unjustified denials, delays or disrespect, or a surprise or unfair bill afterwards.
• Protecting consumers from fraudulent, abusive, unsafe and predatory practices regarding pricing, billing, marketing, care delivery, and more, including unfair denials of care, medical errors, inadequate and ghost networks, junk coverage, and price-gouging, whether by insurers or also providers.
• Addressing specific barriers—ensuring language access, culturally competent care, accurate provider directories, adequate networks in urban and rural areas, and more.
• Encouraging patient engagement and empowerment and institutionalizing the patient voice in health systems to, among other goals, demand better customer service and satisfaction rather than complexity and confusion.

Advancing AFFORDABILITY and High VALUE Care

• Addressing the real incentives and drivers of high health care costs that are inflated, irrational, and impactful.
• Holding the industry accountable for cost, quality, customer service, outcomes, equity, and addressing disparities, starting with greater and more detailed transparency and oversight.
• Fixing market failures and financial incentives so that the goal is to get better, not just bigger, confronting consolidation, corporatization, and other conflicts of interest in the health system.
• Developing and scaling new models of payment and care delivery that promote prevention and the right care at the right time at the right place.

Supporting HEALTH and Economic SECURITY and JUSTICE

• Helping people be more healthy and economically secure, which includes moving to a health system that encourages and provides the tools for maintaining better health, and the comfort and stability that when they need health care, they can get it without significant financial barriers or repercussions–recognizing that health coverage is foundational to economic security, given the potential life-altering impact of a health bill, and how much health costs take from paychecks and other public investments.
• Recognizing the broader social determinants of health, using our credibility or capacity when it adds value to support specific tax policies and public health investments and the connections of the health system to social services and other safety-net and community solutions, including the care economy of home care and long-term care services.
• Connecting with disadvantaged communities and finding added-value ways to support them on health issues, to address issues of structural racism, income and economic barriers, immigration status, LGBTQ issues, women and reproductive services, disability access, rural health, and more.

Families USA’s goals are both shaped by and driven by our anchor values, including:

EQUITY and INCLUSION

• We need reforms that improve the system for everyone—each one of our goals, from coverage to value, should be “for all.”
• In each issue area, we seek to center our advocacy to help the vulnerable and disadvantaged, whether it is because of race, income, education, gender, immigration status, sexual orientation or gender identity, disability, geography or otherwise. Specific populations have specific needs and require specific interventions. Broad reforms by themselves won’t solve specific barriers of rural access, structural racism, or immigrant exclusion.
• While we need to focus on specific needs of specific communities, those solutions aren’t enough to get health care and justice for them or anyone. To achieve meaningful change for these and all communities, we also need big, bold, universal changes that change the power structures and relationships of the system, and to build the majority to win these reforms.

PEOPLE POWER and PARTNERSHIP

• We advance these goals by uplifting the consumer voice about their experiences and building the power of patients and the public, sometimes in alliance but often as a counterpoint to industry influence.
• Co-equal with winning meaningful improvements in patient’s lives, we seek to engage people and organizations into the health policy making conversation and to be as effective as possible. We ensure that the consumer voice is represented, sometimes with our own staff and expertise, but often to engage, empower, and uplift those with specific experience and the public at large.
• While some of our work is to engage and elevate grassroots voices, much of our work is to work through partnerships with other organizations and constituencies, and to engage with all individuals and organizations with respect.
• Just as Families USA believes that issues in are health system are solved not by telling everyone they are on their own, but in community solutions through partnership with one another, our advocacy can be most effective if we do this in partnership—with our national groups, and be recommitting to be a better partner to state and local health advocacy organizations, and to continue our historic role identifying common ground with industry “strange bedfellows.”

TRANSPARENCY and ACCOUNTABILITY

• On behalf of the public, we seek to hold government and industry accountable, starting with seeking transparency, and ultimately accountability to our goals and values, from determining and making public key metrics to ensuring enforcement through the levers of contractor, regulator, or competitor.
• Just as we seek clear goals, metrics, and evaluations for those in the health system, and attempt to model them for ourselves as well, in our processes at the staff and board level, in service to our staff, board, partners, funders, and others.

EXCELLENCE and EFFECTIVENESS

• Families USA prides itself on doing all this work with rigor and conscience, and on being effective in providing meaningful and tangible improvement in patients’ and people’s lives.
• This means we will strive to be factual, fair, and friendly to partners, and be smart, strategic, ardent and agile about advancing our goals for consumers. We will be principled and also practical on behalf of patients and the public.