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Health Reform Will Make You Rich!

Well, OK, maybe not rich. But it should mean higher wages, if it includes the tax on expensive health policies.

That's according to Jonathan Gruber of MIT, who's been studying this and just released a new memo on the subject. As he did previously, he reverse-engineered numbers from the Joint Committee on Taxation to extrapolate wage growth. His findings?

Worker wages rise by $55 billion by 2019

This amounts to almost $700 per insured household in 2019

Worker wages rise by $234 billion in aggregate over this time period

This is also a very progressive wage adjustment.  In every year, the share of wage gains accruing to those with incomes below $100,000 is about two-thirds of the total, and the share of wage gains accruing to those with incomes below $200,000 is over 90% of the total.

I'm swamped with reporting right now, so I can't really speak to the study's methodology or validty. But Gruber is certainly among the most respected and intellectually honest experts in this field. And if you'd like to draw your own conclusions, just read the full paper with the scratch-work. (Just make sure to leave me your thoughts in the comments!)