My uncle needed to have both his lungs transplanted. Both he and my aunt are teachers and would not have been able to afford the tremendous cost of this procedure plus a life-time of followup procedures in the US. Fortunately, they live in Canada, where almost everything was completely covered. They paid about $1000 total out of pocket over the course of several years. People often talk about the long waits in Canada, but other than waiting for the lungs themselves (and that wait would have been at least as long in the US), there was never a wait for anything.