Forget even needs. I don't blame employees for playing the game for whatever reason, as that is the game management has, though its actions/neglect, decided that it wants played.

And this is why financial independence is so sought after by a lot of people - they want to stop playing this game, but without having to make sacrifices to their lifestyle.

Ironically, that financial independence comes about from investing in companies that engage in this game.

You say that healthcare is tied to employment in the US. Obamacare tried to change that but failed.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. At this point, the military axiom of taking any action at all is better than inaction seems to hold. If you want to change the status quo of American healthcare, Obamacare is better than doing nothing while waiting for healthcare Godot, even if Obamacare is the opposite direction of where you want to go.

I see this a lot in our industry (and other industries) as well. People will endlessly bikeshed for a perfect solution until well past the point that "any action at all" was a better choice than continual bikeshedding. This dynamic is often used by stakeholders with a significant investment in the status quo to politically kill any change while appearing to be onboard with change.

I thought the point of Obamacare was to separate healthcare from employment, but it turns out it never succeeded in truly accomplishing that.