One major emphasis on benefits took place after World War II. The federal government imposed wage freezes to deal with inflation then. Employers needed to offer something attractive so applicants would consider them. Since they couldn't compete on salaries, they competed on benefit offerings instead.

In the public sector, there's even more emphasis on benefits. Salaries typically are lower for government jobs. Making up for that is the line of how excellent their benefits are.

Yes, the whole notion of employer-provided health care insurance merits revisiting, especially when people don't stay with one employer for life any more. That said, one reason employer-provided insurance is considerably cheaper than individual health plans is because the risk is spread among a significantly large pool. That model would have to be revisited, and established firms and practitioners could be extremely resistant unless some other enticing arrangements are proposed.

The young ones don't worry about it much because they are low risk, so even if they lost their job for a while, they wouldn't care.

The older ones typically have spouses that work, so they could get insurance through the other company's insurance.

And all of them make boatloads of money, so having to pay for health insurance on their own during a period of unemployment (after the transitional COBRA plan ran out) is not a huge concern.

It seems like this would be much more of a problem for people working in other, less highly-paid industries. But it's a bit of a misplaced concern in a thread about the ideal tech job. Getting rid of all perks would nuke tons of benefits that Googlers and others enjoy. Do you think that Google would make it up in salary if they got rid of the free lunches, laundry service, etc.?

Somehow I feel like that could backfire and we'd end up with no health insurance benefits at all. The companies would love to stop paying for these benefits. We'd need to have universal healthcare in place before this in order to make it work.