Wouldn’t it be great if there were billion dollar bills just lying on the sidewalk? According to a panel of experts, that’s exactly what health care reform would give us.

We told you earlier about the Council of Economic Advisers’ new report on the economic case for health reform. Then we went over to the Brookings Institution to hear CEA chair Christina Romer and some other top health care economists—Republican Doug-Holtz-Eakin and Democrat David Cutler—give a bipartisan perspective on how vital health reform is to the short- and long-term health and stability of the U.S. economy. All agreed health care reform needs to be done—and it needs to be done right.

Romer likened the savings we can reap from reforming the ailing U.S. health care system to "billion dollar bills on the sidewalk."

“There’s no more important issue than health care,” Romer said. “If we do health care reform well, the benefits to the economy will be enormous.”

Romer cited projections that health care costs, if left unchecked, would eat up one-third of the U.S. economy by 2020 and lead to “unsustainable” budget deficits and reduced wages for American workers. On the other hand, reining in the skyrocketing costs by improving the health system’s efficiency will increase standards of living, decrease unemployment, boost government and personal savings and increase economic investment.

Harvard economist Cutler, who was an adviser to President Obama during the campaign, is a strong believer that the costs can be tamed, and that delivery system and payment reform will reap significant and measurable savings. He also called for much more emphasis on preventive care; about three-fourths of our health spending is on chronic disease, much of which can be prevented and/or better managed.

Holtz-Eakin, who was a top adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign and a chief economist for the CEA under President George W. Bush, said that health care is an “economic growth opportunity that we do not want to squander.” But all that agreement on the broad economic picture, he added, doesn’t minimize the fact that reforming the system is still an enormous political challenge.