I don't know if they were being sarcastic, but I'm willing to argue for the position.
There are life altering medical conditions that can make you go blind, for that "vision coverage" as part of medical coverage makes sense. I'm excluding that from the below because by "vision coverage" most people mean "insurance for routine checkups and purchasing glasses".
For routine eye appointments and glasses - their is no high unexpected costs that need to be spread out over a large population. The costs are low and predictable. The majority of the population needs them. So the typical benefit of insurance doesn't exist - i.e. you aren't spreading large unexpected costs over a large number of people so they average out to a small consistent cost.
Meanwhile insuring these things just means that the people purchasing the product no longer have an incentive to keep the price down, and adds bureaucracy, both of which increase the cost without providing a better service.
So - why do you need vision coverage?
I'll acknowledge some counter arguments exist. Encouraging people to get frequent enough eye appointments, spreading the cost of bad eyesight to the minority of people who don't need eyeware, if government supported - subsidizing the basic need of eyeware for poor people, etc. You can make an argument in the other direction to, but I don't think either argument is obviously better, and in the end which side you agree with basically comes down to what your politics are like.
Software engineering and white collar work in general are very visual-heavy professions. It is absurd not to include health coverage as part of compensation when the job involves 40+ hours a week of staring at computer screens. It is also ridiculous that vision and dental insurance are bundled separately from "medical" coverage, but that is a different issue.
I'm assuming your total compensation is the same either way. So it's not that you're not being compensated for staring at computer screens all days, it's just a question of whether your being compensated by being given dollars or being compensated by your eye doctor and glasses manufacturer being given dollars.
Upon rereading your post, your point makes more sense. But don't you at least get discounts on the exams and eyewear? I would assume there's some justification for why vision insurance exists beyond the serious conditions you mention, and thus be an additional benefit from employers of workers who experience ocular wear and tear all day.
You get fake discounts off egregiously inflated eye exam/eyewear prices
You can easily buy prescription glasses online for less than $20 a pair, and you can get an eye exam done for $50-$100
If you use your vision insurance to buy glasses in person, though, good luck getting them for less than $150. The price of the glasses magically inflates to whatever your insurance will cover.
If my vision insurance weren't bundled with my employment as a "free" benefit I'd definitely just use $80 out of my HSA to pay for an eye exam and then buy a sack of glasses online
