It is difficult to come up with a good name sometimes, but I feel that effort often gives me a better understanding of my code. I don't mind that there's only one call site. In fact, many of the functions I write only have one call site. I often break code out to a function so that I can give it a name and make the code easier to read.
I share your distaste for passing the same set of arguments to a function, it's helper, that helper's helper, and so on down the chain. When it gets frustrating, that's more incentive to refactor. Sometimes it pushes me to realize a better design. It's often a sign of too much interdependence, which is hard to reason about.
Regarding your proposal, even if it were a pleasant syntax, I think the alternatives are good enough that having both would go against the Zen of one obvious way.