It was never sustainable. Because the model relied on healthy people subsidizing the people who make extremely poor choices (obesity, smoking, drugs or a combination of that). Obamacare's modeling predicted that significantly more healthy people would sign up, driving costs down. It didn't happen.
Now it is a system that ONLY the unhealthy benefit from. Everyone else pays for extremely bad choices.
I don't think it's fair to characterize unhealthy people as making bad choices. Many choices do affect health, but plenty of healthy people end up needing medical care every day through no fault of their own. Then there's the systemic issues of our healthcare system, low-cost low-quality food (HFCS and other garbage), and even if the consumer knows how to take better care of themselves, they may not have the resources to do much better depending on their life situation (think juggling jobs and taking care of kids, etc). So, I don't think it's strictly a choice to be healthy or to be a drain on the system.
Why is that only an major issue in the US? we have to step back look at the purpose and functionality of an insurance to realise something is fundamentally off in the calculation (Like this post does the napkin maths for).
Corruption greed and blooming price gouging in a market devoid of regulation is to me the only thing that can make the situation this bad.
We already know insurance companies pay less than the out of pocket price, so why is the premium so high that paying out of pocket can even come close to beating insurance.
So it was my extremely poor choice to inherit kidney disease? Or maybe it's my extremely poor choice to undergo dialysis thrice weekly so I can survive? Or my extremely poor choice to even bother living it?
There are a ton of reasons for ill health in this world before you should even suggest character flaws.
> Obamacare's modeling predicted that significantly more healthy people would sign up, driving costs down. It didn't happen.
It was intentionally fucked with. The requirement to get insurance was nulled out for those young, healthy folks. The end result was obvious - eventual collapse of the system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_shared_responsibili...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act
> Obamacare's modeling predicted that significantly more healthy people would sign up, driving costs down. It didn't happen.
That's because the GOP Congress gutted the provisions that heavily incentivized healthy people to sign up.
We could also just do Medicare for All. Every other developed country seems to have figured that out but us :/
Obamacare is basically based on the Swiss system, so not every other developed country has Medicare for all (even the German system is “it’s complicated”). The main difference between the Swiss system and Obamacare though is the Swiss outlaw health insurance being provided as a benefit at work (so basically no group plans, almost everyone is in the same risk pools). Foreigners living in Switzerland need to document their purchase of Swiss health insurance.
Switzerland does have mandated universal health care, so essentially the same result as "Medicare for All". It's just implemented in a different form: mandatory basic insurance + supplemental insurance, instead of a single-payer system. A number of other European countries have something similar.