Representing the economically troubled state of Michigan, home to the auto industry, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow just has to look around her to see how sky-high health care costs have eroded the global competitiveness of U.S. industry. Still, she told a New America-sponsored forum on Capitol Hill the other day, it's "nice to be joined by the data in something that I have been talking about for a long time."

Stabenow, the opening speaker at our forum about employer health costs in a global economy, described how the "most expensive and crazy structure in the world"—aka the U.S. health care system—was damaging the economy, hurting industry, threatening the middle class. "We are literally losing jobs," she said, spending more than our competitors on health but having less to show for it. (Click here for the webcast, here for the study, here for our earlier post.)

Stabenow, a cosponsor of the bipartisan Healthy Americans Act also known as the Wyden-Bennett bill, took issue with lawmakers (presumably including presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain) who say that we have to tackle cost before coverage. "You can't get to cost," Stabenow said, unless you also deal with the uninsured who show up in emergency rooms, who can't get access to decent primary care. The two are related.

"I want to deal with access. I want to deal with cost," she said, adding that she wants America and its trading partners to be in a race to the top, not a race to the bottom. To get to the top, to preserve the middle class and improve the economic wellbeing of our trading partners as well, we need to fix health care.

The challenge is both moral and economic. "This isn't working," she said. "We're spending way too much for the results we're getting. We're losing jobs and fundamentally this is about who we are as Americans. We can do better in the greatest country in the world."