I agree that the healthcare system isn't a dream from what I hear. The main thing I see with the parent's comment though is that in the US you might be making $100k, but paying $15-20k in insurance costs. Whereas you might only be making $80k in the EU but you don't have that same insurance costs. I see this as being the same cost (ignoring the other factors per the OPs request) but just hiding the cost from the employee. Same sort of thing can be seen in the US if you compare the taxes a regular employee pays and a self employed person pays.
The thing is in the US, generally the more you make the lower your insurance costs are.
I made ~$300k last year at a FAANG (Sr. engineer), and my healthcare costs were:
$29/month in premiums
$200/month in an HSA, which I'm saving for retirement (complicated US income tax reasons), so money I don't available for my use but it doesn't go into a black hole either.
$1500 deducible
$3000 total out of pocket
I had a sudden health condition last year, before covid fortunatly, so I maxed out my insurance. So my total costs ended up being $3348 + HSA contributions.
I'm in Washington State, so there's no state income tax, my effective federal tax rate will probably be about 27%.
I'd love to Europe, but it's hard looking at the numbers to justify it. Even if I were willing to take a 50% cut in take home pay, I doubt I could find a job that paid that much.
True, the better jobs tend to have better benefits to go along with the better pay. I'm non-FAANG, making less than a third of you and my max out of pocket is $7k with a $3500 deductible and something like $7k in premiums. My kid has a condition now and so I will be hitting the max out of pocket every year or close to it.
So my comment was intended to apply generally. I can certainly see that there could be some outliers that this wouldn't apply to. I feel like SV and FAANG sort of fall into that category. I think many of us never make close to that money (or maybe I'm just a loser). I think I'll top out at $120k (today's value) if I have some career advancement, which seems unlikely. The US average (median?) for a developer is about $95k.
It takes a bit more structuring but $300k is not impossible. Especially if you have management skills and good communication skills next to solid tech chops.
