Actually if you think about it paying a higher amount for family health care coverage for a worker than if he is single by a company does not really coincide with any reasonable definition of an employees worth. It is rather a company subsidy encouraging some behaviors such as having children. I see companies moving to saying that if you want to cover a spouse your contribution towards health insurance increases.
This reminded me of something which happened in early 2008, the last year I was working for my company and was not yet 100% sure I would ER by the end of that year.
In 2007, I had reduced my weekly work hours from 20 to 12 and had made myself ineligible for enrolment in my company's group health plan. Instead, I went on COBRA and paid 102% of the company's group health premium to remain covered (for the next 18 months), which ws fine.
But during those 18 months I amde an effort, futile as it was, to try to get my company to either extend COBRA eligibility beyond 18 months (which they were allowed to do) or let me go back into the group health plan with my paying 100% of the premiums (I had been paying 50% as a 20-hours-per-week employee for several years). I thought it would be a no-brainer for them to accept me and not have to subsidize my premiums, unlike all of the other employees.
They said no, claiming it would be "fiscally irresponsible" or some other crying-poverty BS like that. I wrote back saying that they provide subsidized coverage to spouses and children of covered employees even though they do not contribute to their bottom line (i.e. worked zero hours) as I did. Furthermore, I told them that if I quit my job and married another covered employee I could gain group health coverage while contributing less (zero, in fact) to the company's bottom line.
They then told me that my working 12 hours per week placed me into a group of high-risk employees who also worked less than 20 hours. Those employees were usually in their early 60s, not able or willing to work enough hours to be eligible for group health but not old enough for Medicare or the company's retiree health benefits. The fact that I was only 45 at the time made no difference to them.
In my exit interview at the end of 2008, I made sure to point this out to the low-level HR flunkie, showing him the letters (not that I thought it would do any good). While the long, tiring, and sickening commute were reasons 1, 2, and 3 for my resignation, this spat over group health coverage (along with its discrimination against single, unchilded employees) was reason #4.