Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) will soon introduce legislation that would allow states to use federal funds they’re receiving through Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care programs to build a universal single-payer system. Advocates are describing the bill as a “lifeline” for advocates:

It would create a mechanism for states to request federal funds after establishing their own health insurance programs…. It would, for the first time, create a system under which a Medicare-for-all program could be rolled out on a state-by-state basis. In California’s case, it would make coverage available to the roughly 7 million people now lacking health insurance.

“This is a huge deal,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica advocacy group. “This is a lifeline for people who want to create a Medicare system at the state level.”

The bill could warm the hearts of liberals who expressed frustration with the Affordable Care Act’s more moderate approach of building on the existing health care system and should also satisfy GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor has sought to differentiate his 2006 health reform from Obamacare by rejecting a federal prescription for reform and promising to “pursue policies that give each state the power to craft a health care reform plan that is best for its own citizens.”

The ACA creates state flexibility by granting waivers to states that meet certain coverage standards and a bipartisan group of lawmakers has offered legislation expanding the provision by allowing states with innovative health care solutions to opt out of certain provisions beginning in 2014. Romney, meanwhile, has pledged to build on the ACA’s flexibility and grant states to the ability to opt out of the law entirely.

McDermott’s measure would go even further and encourage states to repurpose federal funds to build a universal single-payer health system of their own. If Republicans are truly interested in states rights, they will back it in mass.

A new report out today from the Commonwealth Fund examined health care spending among 13 developed nations, including the United States. According to the report’s findings, the United States spent far more on health care than any other developed nation – “nearly $8,000 per person in 2009.” But the researchers found that the higher level of spending did not correspond to a higher quality of care:

High U.S. spending on health care does not seem to be explained by either greater supply or higher utilization of health care services. There were 2.4 physicians per 100,000 population in the U.S. in 2009, fewer than in all the countries in the study except Japan. The U.S. also had the fewest doctor consultations (3.9 per capita) of any country except Sweden. Relative to the other countries in the study, the U.S also had few hospital beds, short lengths of stay for acute care, and few hospital discharges per 1,000 population. On the other hand, U.S. hospital stays were far more expensive than those in other countries—more than $18,000 per discharge. By comparison, the cost per discharge in Canada was about $13,000, while in Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Germany it was less than $10,000.

“It is a common assumption that Americans get more health care services than people in other countries, but in fact we do not go to the doctor or the hospital as often,” said Squires. “The higher prices we pay for health care and perhaps our greater use of expensive technology are the more likely explanations for high health spending in the U.S. Unfortunately, we do not seem to get better quality for this higher spending.”

Prescription drugs were also found to be far more expensive in the United States than several other countries, and Americans used expensive technology like CT or MRI scans more frequently. According to the researchers, meanwhile, while the U.S. had the best survival rates for breast and colorectal cancer, the survival rate for cervical cancer was below average. The rate of asthma-related deaths among people aged 5 to 39 was also high, as were amputations for people with diabetes.

This chart details how much the United States spends on health care per capita compared to other developed nations:

This one compares survival rates for three types of cancer:

Previous studies have cast doubt on the effectiveness of more expensive treatments. Meanwhile, the health care reform law encourages physicians to focus on quality rather than quantity of care in an effort to bring down health care costs.

-Zachary Bernstein

Democrats are accusing Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) of hypocrisy after the Massachusetts Republican and staunch opponent of the Affordable Care Act revealed to the Boston Globe on Tuesday that he relies on a provision of the law to keep his 23-year-old daughter “on his congressional health insurance plan.” Brown ran as the 41st vote against President Obama’s health care reform bill in a special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and voted three times to repeal the law.

But now, he’s brushing off the criticism by insisting that “he was actually taking advantage of the law in Massachusetts that allows children to remain on their parents’ insurance plan until age 24.” “You can do that in Massachusetts, I voted for that,” Brown said. “For (Warren) to call me a hypocrite as to how Gail and I provide for our family, it’s sad,” Brown said, referring to his wife, Gail Huff.

Brown may have taken advantage of Massachusetts reform while serving in the Bay State, but as a senator, he’s benefiting from the ACA’s most popular provision.

According to the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) website, Brown’s congressional health care plan (the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan) is regulated by federal law, not state legislation — “The FEHB Program is a Federal program and preempts state law requirements,” the site says — and the program allows dependents to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26 as a result of Obamacare:

An official at OPM confirmed to ThinkProgress that “As long as the parent has a self-and-family enrollment, dependent children are covered under that enrollment until they reach age 26, as a result of passage of the ACA. Before the ACA, the dependent age was by FEHB law up to age 22.”

The Brown campaign did not return multiple requests for comment.

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) ran as the 41st vote against President Obama’s health care reform bill in a special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and voted three times to repeal the law and take way health care coverage from the 30 million Americans who will benefit from the law by 2014 and the millions who are already taking advantage of its provisions.

But yesterday, this Tea Party champion and great opponent of Obamacare admitted something astonishing: his 23 year old daughter is one of the 2.5 million young Americans who are benefiting from a regulation that allows young people to stay on their parents’ health care plan until age 26:

“Of course I do,’’ the Massachusetts Republican told the Globe. Brown is insuring his daughter Ayla, a professional singer who is 23 years old, under a widely popular provision of the law requiring that family plans cover children up to age 26.

Brown said the extended use of his congressional coverage is not inconsistent with his criticism of the federal law, enacted over his objection after he won a special election in 2010, because the same coverage could be required by individual states.

Brown is responding to charges of hypocrisy by claiming that “he still wants to repeal the law” because it is inferior to the measure enacted by then-governor Mitt Romney in 2006. “I’ve said right from the beginning, that if there are things that we like, we should take advantage of them and bring them back here to Massachusetts,” the senator said.

Brown has a history of denying to others the benefits he himself enjoys. After all, his first campaign for the senate was predicated on the notion that Massachusetts has enacted successful health reform and should not have to pay for a national effort to expand coverage and lower health care costs. Now he’s displaying this very same selfishness with the ACA, telling voters that while his daughter can stay on her parents’ health plan, their children should go out and pay for their own health insurance.

Unnecessary health costs add some $158 billion to the nation’s health care tab, and requiring women to undergo pelvic exams before receiving a prescription for birth control pills only adds to this total. As Mother Jones’ Stephanie Mencimer explains, despite any evidence showing that the annual exam improves health outcomes, one-third of doctors always require women to undergo a Pap smear before they prescribe hormonal contraception, and 44 percent regularly do so:

For instance, there’s no evidence that doctors can diagnose ovarian cancer with a pelvic exam in women showing no symptoms. A clinical trial found that doctors were unable to identify any cancers in test subjects by pelvic exams alone, and the National Cancer Institute no longer recommends the tests for postmenopausal women. [...]

The scientific basis for much of the traditional well-woman ob-gyn annual check-up is so slim that “the routine pelvic examination may be an example of more service leading to worse outcomes,” Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, an ob-gyn at Columbia University, wrote in the Journal of Women’s Health last year.

So why are doctors so adamant about the additional testing? Drug and medical device companies fund most continuing medical education, which is primarily how doctors learn about new science, and these industries are not interested in limiting care, Shannon Brownlee, a health policy expert at the New America Foundation, explains to Menicmer. Under the existing fee-for-service health reimbursement system, doctors are also paid for every additional procedure — regardless of whether it actually improves patient care.

Delinking pelvic exams from women’s birth control prescriptions underscores the importance of health research in guiding health care decisions. The Affordable Care Act invests in comparative effectiveness research to help determine the most cost-effective course of treatment, and it also begins to recalibrate the system so we stop paying doctors for unnecessary care and instead reimburse them for treatments that only bolster patient outcomes.