Some guy in the Army Air Corps gets paid one dollar for doing ten dollars worth of work, and his medical and dental care is "free" because his employer is paying for it.
When I say that it costs me $1.50 to pay someone $1, I'm not even referring to the cost of employer-paid benefits (they should technically be included on the $1 side of the ledger). To me, there's no difference between paying someone $40,000 per year with a $6,000 medical plan and paying $46,000 per year with no medical plan.
I'm talking about the cost of things that the employee never sees as a "benefit."