Even after rebates and discounts (which are not available to every American, and require research to find), medications are still unaffordable and there isn't a good and fair reason as to why the drugs cost so much in the first place.

Since there isn't government regulation in place to control prices of drugs in the U.S., the negotiating is left up to the insurance companies. The U.S. is unique in this way. In Canada (and most other countries) the government oversees responsibility for the provision of healthcare. This ensures that every single person can access healthcare when they need it.

The U.S. has been through many ideations and bills proposing government-run healthcare, and it has mostly been shut down. In 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law, which greatly expanded health insurance access to Americans, and instituted an individual mandate.

This is not out of the ordinary for most other countries — Canada and most European countries have what's called compulsory healthcare (an individual mandate). The thought behind this idea is that if everyone has to legally have health insurance, they're more likely to seek care when they need it, less likely to let problems go until they're extremely expensive to fix, and less likely to go to the Emergency Room (the most expensive place to seek healthcare) when they're sick.

Instead, people will go to their doctor's office. They also received a free annual physical so their doctor could keep an eye out for potential problems and chart changes in health patterns over time. If everyone does this, the country as a whole gets healthier, and people spend less money on healthcare.

However, the ACA has largely been dismantled and is nearly nonexistent at this point. While health marketplaces still exist and two very important provisions remain in place (insurance companies must cover pre-existing conditions and allow children up to age 26 to stay on their parents' insurance plans), the law did little to make insurance or prescription drugs more affordable. (The reasons for this are complicated, and numerous, and a discussion for a different day.)

This is not to say that the U.S. doesn't have any kind of government-sponsored healthcare. They have Medicaid and Medicare — and the lack of government regulation and negotiation with regard to prescription drug prices is especially problematic for citizens in the U.S. who are on Medicare.