I'm not exactly sure how much better Amazon pays, if at all better, here in SoCal starting pay is around $12-$14 per hour for L1 associates, but anecdotally I feel like this is on the higher end when compared to similar jobs, at least compared to the jobs I've held. I can't speak to the insurance coverage provided since I'm a part time worker but from what I've heard, while pay isn't great, the insurance seems to be pretty good once you're eligible.
I will say that from what I've seen my station managers take safety very seriously. Some of this must extend up the corporate ladder because I had a friend who was injured on the job here and Amazon did a very good job of making sure he got the care he required. He actually wanted to come back to work much earlier than Amazon would allow, he missed his coworkers, but they wanted to make sure he was completely healed and made it clear that he shouldn't rush things. He was being paid worker's comp during this time. This certainly made a good impression on me.
I also really appreciated how straight forward the hiring process was. I was unemployed and homeless, I actually lived on an empty lot behind our warehouse for a while, when I was hired and out of all the jobs I applied to Amazon had the most streamlined hiring process. This might not seem like a huge deal but when you're already struggling it was nice to not have too many hoops to jump through to try and land a job.
Obviously due to my background I'm probably viewing my work overly positively, it feels pretty great to finally have a little bit of savings, I've saved up around $1500 over the past year and this is the most money I've had in my entire life, but overall I've enjoyed my time at Amazon. But again, from the reporting I've seen there are still some pretty glaring systemic problems within the company.
Edit: I saw a poster comment under this post asserting that I was being paid to post here in defense of Amazon, the post has since been deleted after receiving some downvotes, for the record I did not downvote the poster, but I will address their concerns. I can certainly understand why my post might raise suspicions. To give some background I have another account on HN that I've been active on for approximately three years and have a bit over 2000 karma. I post a few times a month, and by post I mean I usually just ask tons of questions about topics I have a limited understanding of and the kind people here try their best to explain things to me. I wanted to keep this account separate form that one since I don't post anything Amazon related using my normal account. I hope I don't sound like too much of a shill but I'm somewhat excited to finally be able to contribute to a topic I have some understanding of.