60k/yr to 180k/yr are not unbelievable salaries for a junior Canadian moving to a now more senior position at a big silicon valley tech company.
Even significant health costs per month are ignored in a corporate environment in the US, though small startups may be different. For entrepreneurs, health care costs would matter before the company was large enough to have figured out benefits.
Any startup employees\founders willing to comment on how health insurance is generally handled at US startups?
I have a chronic health condition that needs some fairly expensive drugs and relatively frequent doctor visits and procedures. My total out of pocket healthcare expenses are less than $500 per year.
I'm up-to-date as of 2011, I'm sure things have (and still are) radically changing - but the health insurance situation in the US was a horrible mess until recently - Everything worked fine until the day it didn't, and then you were possibly shut out of healthcare.
I found it obnoxious and annoying, and it's one of the reasons I'll probably never move to that cesspool. The idea that I should have 5 years knocked off my career because I came up in New York (which is a far better city than San Francisco, and far less expensive relative to opportunity and urban amenity) is one I just can't accept.