Some perspective from the US.
My girlfriend has lupus - diagnosed at eight. The lupus destroyed her kidney by her fourteenth birthday. She got a transplant at sixteen. Her transplant was covered by her mom's insurance with the rest of the costs falling onto our state's medicaid because she was a minor and her mom, an RN, was not well to do. Her medications were also covered by her mom's health insurance and picked up by our state's medicaid program.
She and her mom moved to another state when my girlfriend turned seventeen, so from that point it was her mom's insurance picking up the medication. She and I started dating when she turned eighteen. At that time, all of her drugs, including anti-rejection medications, were $5 per 90 day supply at the local pharmacy under her mom's insurance.
Her mom lost her job when she was 21, so my girlfriend lost her insurance and was unable to afford COBRA. My girlfriend did not qualify for medicaid in this new state because she was not a minor, pregnant, or considered disabled by the federal government despite not being able to work with the lupus. At this time, our best option for her medications were discount mail order pharmacies, which cost $1000 per 30 day supply, which we could barely afford with my computer programmer salary, as I could not add her to my insurance due to us not being married.
For awhile, she was on PCIP and then a plan made available on the ACA exchange. Her premiums were $400 per month, and that made her prescriptions $20 per 90 day supply. So it brought the costs from $1000 per 30 day supply to about $450 per month, counting insurance. We managed to make this work for a few months before I was laid off from my programming gig and lost my insurance.
We moved back to the state she moved from due to a job offer. She still did not qualify for medicaid, but my new job allowed me to add someone to my insurance if we were married or domestic partners. So we got a domestic partnership, and her drugs now again cost $5 per 90 day supply.
So I've been with someone on both sides in America - good insurance, no insurance, basic insurance, and then good insurance again. We really need to find a better system. We've survived by luck and really tight financial planning.