I think eventually, people will refuse to work for less money in the same jobs and demand more money or move on to a better payer. That may take years and people will literally die in the mean time. I worked for $25 an hour 12 years ago while my brother in law was making $38 and hour with less skills and education. He paid his own bennies. The reason I was happy was the killer benefits I got made it worthwhile. I had a bigger house, a better car, and went on more vacations than he did for most of our careers. Now, I may have my bennies removed after counting on them for decades. Kinda leaves me in a lurch in retirement. If a corporation chooses to pay the fine and drop coverage, they will find their better employees suddenly looking for more money in a different place. The marketplace will eventually level the field, but their will be pain in the short term.
I wouldn't have a problem losing my health care from work if they paid me the difference to shop for my own. You and I know that's not coming. I have very little doubt I will end up broke and under a bridge after working and saving for 40 years. This is the difference between living middle class and living in the projects for most people. If you worked and saved in order to get a million dollar IRA for retirement and now find out you needed a couple of thousand more per month income to keep you out of a cardboard box, it becomes more than an intellectual discussion on a blog about paying your own way. After working for 30 years towards something and then to find out the government says, "No you can't!" is kinda worrisome.
Yes, you should get paid more as when an employer calculates the cost to hire you, benefits are factored in to that total cost.
In the last major corporation I worked for prior to starting my own consulting firm, we factored in 50% of the base salary as the cost of all benefits. So if we hired someone at a base salary of $100,000 then we knew the actual cost to the company was $150,000.
As we have been down the road of businesses behaving like mom and dad for so many years and in many cases there are contractual agreements employers have painted themselves into an economic corner.
The best we can do is try to change things going forward and as central planners have been a proven and consistent failure, and because our founders wanted us to have control I would rather get my full pay and decide for myself what I wanted to spend it on.