The employee was concerned about costs, including uncovered medical costs with insurance [0], which is why they didn't take family leave (which the US federally only guarantees unpaid, and the state the employee was in has no state paid family leave—though both his previous state and the one he declined to move to for the job do have paid family leave.)
So, both public health insurance policy and public employee benefits policy in the US, as well as Amazon's particular practices (employees aren't prevented from providing paid leave or reduced demands without a mandate), are involved in this case.
The government should provide for people in this situation so that if you lost your job due to the circumstances, it shouldn't be a double-whammy that will sink the rest of your life.
In the absence of a government safety net, the company should pick up that slack if they value the employee more than the cost of hiring and training someone new. In fact, it may be in their best interest regardless, because loyalty among your employees is a very expensive asset.
If two outfielders are running to catch a fly ball and then both stop at the last second because they each think the other one had it and the ball hits the ground, I'd consider them both at fault.
And even if you have long-term disability payments, it’s often some fraction of your existing salary requiring you to keep working to pay all the bills.
Sure being unpaid for a time is bad, but you won't be massively in the red...
And this specific example, the guy is well off. Which if not for medical bills, they'd all be fine.
To reword your comment, " Something very bad is happening, but because the remedy wouldn't completely go away it's not worth doing?"
Grandparent said “this is why universal healthcare exists” and I noted that it wouldn’t solve the problem. Dude still needs a job and his wife still has cancer.
Nor the taxpayer. It looks more like insurance than healthcare.
It's hard to see how you could implement universal healthcare successfully in country like the US which has third-world standards for corruption and democracy, and low average human capital.
It's for this cases that universal healthcare paid by taxes exists. I wouldn't blame it on your boss or Amazon. It's the USA.
A person should not depend on money or productivity to be cured.
And a company should not be liable to spend $300000 an year on a non productive employee.
Which btw is about 9 years junior developer gross salary equivalent in Italy.