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Comment by stephenhuey | Hacker News Reader

FAANG employee health insurance? Something like 1% of American workers get that, if even that many. Then throw in my oil company friends here in Houston and a few other industries which give premium benefits and you still have a tiny subset of the American workforce getting exceptionally strong benefits. Not at all indicative of the experience of most Americans.

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The universities I worked for (both public and private) provided the same level of PPO insurance, as did a random fitness startup, a clinical diagnostics company, and a construction company. I invite you to reread the part where I said “several employers [plural] ranging from university to FAANG”.

Here in Houston, my friend who works at UH has excellent insurance. A quick search online confirms that it is much better than average. Different structure for employees at Rice, my alma mater, but still excellent. Gemini describes these employees being in a kind of "benefits bubble" here in Texas, and they're getting something way better from what most Texans get.

You said FAANG, so perhaps you're in California, a state that has laws regulating health insurance to an extent that make it unique in the USA?

> You said FAANG, so perhaps you're in California, a state that has laws regulating health insurance to an extent that make it unique in the USA

That is definitely a confounding factor, although I’m curious how much of that is the urban vs rural split in other states. (The construction company was not in California but oil boom-town adjacent in Texas)

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