Yikes, that 401k stuff sounds even worse than Canadian group RRSPs. And I agree, I'd also want to decouple the 401k from employers completely. If large unions were a thing in the US they could potentially lobby the government to make that a reality or is it already possible to have your own individual 401k on top?

As far as I know there aren't any group RRSPs in Canada with vesting periods. The matched amount goes straight into your RRSP (even if they do show the employee and employer portion separately but it's yours to keep for sure). I definitely would love to have those detached fully from employers in the sense that group RRSPs weren't a thing. The investment options inside those are very limited. Unfortunately so far I know of no company that will send an RRSP match to your own individual RRSP but at least individual RRSPs are a thing and have many providers with lots of investment options to choose from. There are some employers though that have group RRSPs that allow you to transfer out at least your own contribution after a short time frame, thus only keeping the matched part locked up in high fee investments.

And yeah agreed on the health plan situation. Same here. Always funny to see the "great news, your health plan got cheaper next year" updates. Never mind that the cheaper plan also pay 80% instead of 100% of certain items. That said, in Canada you aren't completely SOL if you don't have an employer plan and there's still some health care available to you through the provincial insurance programs even if those aren't that great either.

While we're comparing and because I mentioned the great PTO landscape in Germany, the above is still much better than what Germany has for retirement savings (caveat: haven't been employed there for a looong time, so maybe this changed and this is just about the private portion. There's still the regular state pension, not that this is to be expected to be much given how the system works and what demographics are doing to that model). There are private, partially tax sheltered ways to save from your gross income but it's all going to be locked up in some insurance company's "product" until retirement. Including high fees, putting all the risk on you etc. Sort of like a group RRSP but with even worse options and conditions and there's no equivalent of an individual RRSP where you can do whatever you want in a tax sheltered way.

While we're at it, even though we're going quite a bit off topic by now:

Does the US have an equivalent of the TFSA (tax sheltered gains/dividends/interest but you can only contribute after tax money and a max amount per year), which you could use instead of the 401k to some extent?

Germany does not for example. Instead you have a measly 801 EUR of "tax free capital gains". That's the amount of actual gains/dividends/interest per year. So in Germany if you did everything right and started saving for yourself early on and your investments are making say 15000EUR in dividends each year, you gotta pay 25% tax on 14199EUR of those and only receive ~11450EUR. If I did the same in Canada inside a TFSA, I get the full 15000CAD to use or reinvest. That's quite a difference over some years.