France, for example, had (a think the recent governments have loosened it) a 35-hour maximum work week with a pretty strict cap on overtime. One of the express purposes of which was to force employers to hire more people by limiting how many any individual could work.
Minimum wage is about $12/hour and I can't speak at all to how close to a living wage that is.
But yes, if there is no additional employment cost of allowing someone to work 40 hours instead of 20, I'm sure most employers would prefer to have one 40 instead of two 20. But there are a lot of things that muddy the issue on employment cost besides just healthcare.
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