The Congressional Budget Office issued a sobering report that projected how many people will choose to work less because of the effects of the Affordable Care Act. CBO predicts that the health-care law will shrink the number of hours worked by the equivalent of 2 million full-time jobs. That’s about twice the impact that CBO predicted in 2010, when the law was signed.

That doesn’t mean 2 million people will be thrown out of work by Obamacare, as some critics asserted.

It does mean many workers will have less incentive to work. Some will gain welcome flexibility-if they have clung to jobs just to keep employer-based health care, they will have access to coverage that’s not conditioned on holding a job.

But, and here’s where the impact is likely pernicious, some will quit or work less precisely because they’ll now qualify for Medicaid or for subsidies under the law. In effect, they’ll have a government incentive to be less productive.

Government subsidies that persuade people to be less productive are not healthy for the nation. They’re also costly. Which goes to the more alarming news that came out of the CBO last week.

The CBO-as close as you’ll get in Washington to a nonpartisan source of information-released its federal budget projections for the next 10 years. The prospect is bleak:

The agency projects that annual deficits will stabilize through 2017 but then will launch into a long rise. By the most useful measure-debt as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product-the CBO sees that number rising from 72.1 percent in 2013 to 79.2 percent by 2024. That would be the highest U.S. debt burden since the years after federal borrowing spiked to fight World War II.

It’s unfortunate that a new Republican initiative has drawn scant attention. Republican Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Orrin Hatch of Utah have filed a bill that offers an alternative to Obamacare.

Their proposal would continue some popular Obamacare provisions. Consumers could not be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, though they would have to be “continually” enrolled in a health plan to have that protection. The Republican plan would more narrowly focus subsidies on lower- and moderate-income Americans. It would free insurers to offer a wider variety of plans so that people would have more price and coverage options than they have under Obamacare.

Editorial, Pages 10 on 02/10/2014