If in 1980 my employer would cover the $30 cost of a doctor's consultation, and today they'll cover the $150 cost of exactly the same consultation, am I better compensated?

Some would say receiving the same thing is not an increase, even if the sticker price is higher.

Came here to say this. It’s unclear that medical care has improved for people as the costs have gone up. If they’ve only gotten more expensive, then in a basket-of-goods analysis, earning power has decreased.

Edit: Just to be clear, obviously techniques and procedures get ever more sophisticated. The question is more specifically whether the average person is seeing an improvement in care that is proportional to the increase in costs. E.g., if office appointment costs have doubled for someone over the past ten years, have they seen a double or greater increase in effectiveness of care? Or is it just more expensive.

Well, age adjusted mortality has gone down by about 1/3 since 1980 and mortality rate for cancer is down about 21%

Economically, that’s simply not the employer’s fault — that the cost of certain employer sponsored benefits has significantly outpaced inflation.

If there are components of compensation which are cheaper to provide now than 30 years ago, receiving the same thing in that case is counted as lower total compensation.

Or to put it another way, if employer share of health benefits stayed exactly the same and employee share took all the hit, and instead, your paycheck increased — leaving total compensation at exactly the same dollar amount — would you consider that as better compensation? Because under that scenario you would be worse off after taxes.

I think the point is these are separate issues. Compensation is going up - employers are paying more for employee benefits.

The problem is on the medical services side. We're get the same or slightly better medical services for 200-300% the cost.

Of course, if you look at median income, almost all of that increase came 1980-2000: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

I believe that chart is using the governemnt's CPI to calculate the 'inflation adjusted' part. You can find all sorts of academic criticism of how CPI doesn't accurately reflect inflation (most notably of housing/rent prices), which is now the lion's share of a family's expense in the United States.

Then 'real' non-farm compensation isn't really inflation-adjusted in a terribly meaningful way, is it? Also, often the premiums aren't paid entirely by employers.