What a strange thing for your colleague to be concerned about. If the enroute weather is dodgy and you want to improve your situational awareness with the latest METARs then do it.
If VHF datalink is u/s and it costs the company more money to improve your SA then so be it! Of course you always have HF volmets as an option if you can find them quickly enough from the Gen Text Manual but I wouldn't be overly concerned about price.
Where is this cost-over-sensibility mindset coming from? Is it something that's coming with new Captains, or maybe from the training department? I hope this isn't what they're pushing through during command training
Just my two cents.