Once Again, The Right Wing's ACA Part-Time Myth Falls Apart

New Study Finds “Little Evidence” That The Affordable Care Act Pushes Workers To Part-Time Employment

CNBC reported that a study published by the journal Health Affairs “found little evidence that the ACA has caused increases in part-time employment as of 2015,” debunking a long time conservative media attack on President Obama's health care law. 

Despite being repeatedly debunked, right-wing pundits have continued to push the false claim that the Affordable Care Act would negatively effect American employment, claiming its enactment would drive losses in full-time jobs while increasing part-time employment -- though no data has supported this assertion.

A January 5 article from CNBC reported that despite Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) assertion that the ACA has “forced millions of people into part-time work,” “the analysis did not find such a shift to a reduction in work hours,” and this speculative claim “isn't borne out by reality”:

A new study further undercuts a major claim by critics of the Affordable Care Act, who contended that the law would encourage companies to slash full-time workers' hours and shift them into part-time work in order to avoid having to offer them health insurance.

The research “found little evidence that the ACA had caused increases in part-time employment as of 2015,” according to a summary of the findings published in the journal Health Affairs on Tuesday.

“We can say with a large degree of confidence that there is nothing we can see nationwide when we look at the whole workforce” that would support a claim that the so-called employer mandate or other Obamacare features have led to increases in part-time employment at the expense of full-time jobs, said Kosali Simon, a professor at Indiana University, and a co-author of the report.

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Critics of the law have said that many employers, rather than subsidize workers' insurance plans or pay the Obamacare fine, would instead cut workers' hours so that they fell below the 30-hour-per-week threshold that would trigger the penalty.

“There doesn't appear to be any substantial changes in the labor market as a result of Obamacare. The anecdotes are real, but I think it's just not happening in large numbers.” -Larry Levitt, senior vice president, Kaiser Family Foundation

But the research published Tuesday in Health Affairs strongly suggests that such “speculation that employers would reduce work hours to avoid the mandate that they must offer health insurance to full-time employees” isn't borne out by reality.

“If this were true, one would expect to find increases in employment at the 'kink' just below the thirty-hour threshold,” the paper noted.