Protect Our Care’s (POC) best-in-class “War Room” of health care lobbyists, researchers, digital organizers, and communications professionals in Washington, DC and in 10 to 15 states annually have been consistently able to win the battles that must be won to defend and strengthen Medicaid and other health care programs such as the ACA and Medicare. Working closely with our national and community-based partners, we educate the public, the media, and policymakers. In addition, we create shared resources like polling and messaging guidance, reports, and fact sheets and work closely with our state teams to draft press releases, conduct press calls, organize events to generate media coverage, place op-eds, engage with elected officials, and amplify the voices of our health care storytellers. This combined “inside-outside” legislative strategy is proven and cost-effective.
POC is a longtime leader and trusted partner in the health care coalition space. We convene coalition tables, provide a wide array of resources for allied organizations, and team up with partners to host earned media events – both nationally and in targeted states. These include:
- Coalition Tables. POC convenes, chairs or co-chairs, and participates in a number of health care coalitions. We lead a coalition of health care and multi-issue organizations committed to defending the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) prescription drug affordability provisions and a group of advocates and academics committed to a successful implementation of the IRA’s prescription drug provisions. POC also participates in a number of other coalitions, including the Medicaid-focused MLCC, a civil rights/health equity working group on the unwinding of Medicaid and the Health Care Task Force chaired by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
- “9:45” Stakeholder List & Calls. POC maintains an email listserv of more than 600 health care advocates, policy experts, union leaders, Hill and Administration staffers, and others in the progressive health care space. Twice weekly (at 9:45 a.m.), we convene a conference call with our co-hosts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, to inform the list of the health care news of the day, review our policy priorities for the week, and provide updates on upcoming activities in the coalition.
- State and Congressional District Teams. POC typically has teams in ten to fifteen targeted states at any given time. We begin 2025 with teams in 15 states: AK, AZ, CA, GA, IA, ID, ME, MI, NC, NH, NY, PA, VA, WI, and WV. Our state teams are leaders at the health care coalition tables of their respective states, they regularly team up with other organizations for their own earned media events each month, and they are good partners who share resources, messaging, and storytellers with allies in-state.
- Storytellers. POC has built the largest and most impactful network of health care storytellers in the country. We have identified, trained, and featured hundreds of storytellers who can speak to their own health care experiences at events, in opinion pieces, and on social media. In addition to appearing at Protect Our Care events, we have connected our storytellers to Members of Congress, the White House, HHS, and allied organizations who wish to feature them as well.
- Deep-Dive Briefings for Partners. When there is a particularly urgent call to action, we convene the health care and progressive groups for a deep-dive discussion on the upcoming course of action. We do this around pending legislation, Congressional recesses, nomination proceedings, and ahead of elections. We provide messaging, research, polling, strategy, and opportunities to get involved in upcoming activities.
- Resource Packets. We produce hundreds of reports and fact sheets that summarize complex health care policy ideas for our partners and grassroots activists. This research is combined with our poll-testing messaging into timely resource packets that are distributed to allies on the Hill and in advocacy organizations in DC and across the country.
- Creating earned media platforms for local voices and organizations. We regularly host press calls and press conferences to highlight how various policies affect the health care of different constituency groups, and we rely on the work of organizations in those respective spaces to help us paint that picture. To that end, we have partnered with dozens of different organizations to make that case via joint reports and earned media events – including Patients for Affordable Drugs, AARP, the Alliance for Retired Americans, Little Lobbyists, NAACP, UnidosUS, SEIU, Rural Forward, Small Business For America’s Future, the National Partnership for Women & Families, and Young Invincibles. In 2024, representatives from 153 state and local organizations participated in at least one of our state press events.
- Polling & Messaging. We commission polling on health care issues that informs our messaging and enables us to run tightly orchestrated, narrative-shaping initiatives that integrate the voices of policy makers with those of people who are directly impacted by health care policies. We share and evangelize those narratives and results across a broad spectrum of allies and audiences.