That's only true if you have high enough volume, and can write off the one-time costs e.g. Microchip PIC10F200 can be bought from Microchip Direct for as little as $0.34 USD each, preprogrammed with your code, provided you are ordering more than two reels at a time (3000 per reel). If you are only building 10 units, you are probably looking at half a day to write and test the debouncer and program all the chips, which could easily add $20 to the cost of each unit, by the time you've figured in wages and business overheads.