Forget death panels. Lately critics of the Affordable Care Act have been promoting a different claim—that “Obamacare” is a job-killer. Specifically, they say, it will stifle the economy with regulations and taxes. But the economic literature doesn’t support this claim. If anything, it suggests the opposite: The Affordable Care Act will boost the economy.

By now, most people who follow politics know that the law will result in more than 30 million additional Americans getting health insurance. But what few realize is that, by expanding insurance coverage, the law will also increase economic activity. These newly insured individuals will demand more medical care than when they were uninsured. And while it takes many years to train a family physician or nurse practitioner, it doesn’t take much time to train the assistants and technicians (and related support staff) who can fill much of this need. In many cases, these are precisely the sort of medium-skill jobs that our economy desperately needs—and that the health care sector has already been providing, even during the recession.

More immediately, the increase in economic security for American families will also mean an increase in consumer spending. Many uninsured consumers are forced to set aside money in low interest liquid accounts to make sure they have enough to cover unexpected medical costs. With the security provided by health insurance, they can free that money up for consumption that is much more valuable to them. When the federal government expanded Medicaid in the 1990s, my own research has shown, the newly insured significantly increased their spending on consumer goods. More purchases of consumer goods will provide short-run stimulation to the economy and more hiring.

But what about the financing—and all those “job-killing taxes”? The law does indeed apply new taxes, primarily on three sources. The first is on parts of the health care industry—medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and insurance. But these taxes are effectively asking those sectors to “kick back” some of the revenue increases that the law will provide, by creating so many new paying customers. On net, these sectors are major winners from health care reform.

The second is an extension of the Medicare tax on the wealthiest Americans, those with incomes above $250,000 per year. There is now a large body of literature examining the impact of tax changes on the highest income taxpayers. This literature finds that those taxpayers will avoid some of those taxes by re-categorizing their incomes in ways that minimize taxes. But there is no evidence that they will actually work less hard, invest less, or do anything which reduces their “real contribution” to the economy.