Work less, make more: Obamacare incentives.

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: Citings - Brief article

Cut your work hours and have more money to spend: How many people wouldn't take that deal? Thanks to the combination of rules and benefits built into the federal health care overhaul, it's an opportunity that millions of Americans will soon have before them, according to a March paper by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan.

Mulligan's paper, published through the National Bureau of Economic Research, argues that under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), somewhere between 6 million and 11 million employed individuals would actually see an increase in their disposable income by cutting average weekly work hours. Mulligan estimates that roughly half of them "would primarily do so by making themselves eligible for the ACA's federal assistance with health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket health costs, despite the fact that subsidized workers are not able to pay health premiums with pre-tax dollars."

Mulligan's paper walks readers through the hypothetical example of a person deciding between a part-time job without health benefits and a full-time...