If you’re not on Medicare, which itself is rapidly moving toward financially shaky ground, you may be one of the people who was misled into Obamacare. The president told you that if you liked your healthcare plan and current doctor that you could keep both your plan and the doctor, and that the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) was actually affordable. Today we all know that was a lie.

With United Healthcare and Aetna now pulling out of the majority of Obamacare marketplace exchanges, things are about to get even more confusing. So let’s take a look at some facts and try to predict what might happen.

In March 2010, the Congressional Budget Office predicted enrollment figures for 2016 would be at 21 million. Today in 2016, the CBO has reduced their enrollment estimates to 10 million. Why? Because common sense says that companies are in business to make a profit. So we can conclude that the Affordable Care Act was and remains a disaster, having failed to keep the promises Obama made to you the public, and to the insurance companies who are dropping out.

Obamacare tried to force a majority of Americans into one of its plans or face a fine. If that concept had succeeded, the insurance companies would have been able to offset the losses caused by millions of very ill patients who signed up with enrollment of younger, healthier participants in the program who require little care and fewer services.

That’s not what happened. Healthy young people and many middle-income working people balked at the cost and deductibles, and chose instead to risk IRS fines for doing so. For those who received federal subsidies that made monthly premiums affordable, the deductible amounts and co-pays – about $12,000 for a family of four – are required before Obamacare pays a dime. That is and remains unaffordable for too many Americans.

Without the healthier people in the plans, the insurance companies began losing hundreds of millions of dollars covering primarily the very ill, and it gets worse for 2017. For those Americans staying with their Obamacare plans next year, they will soon be receiving notifications of premium increases ranging from 23 percent to as high as 58 percent, plus they’ll still face enormous deductibles before their insurance coverage begins.

The US is heading towards a $20 trillion national debt. With Obamacare failing, isn’t it interesting that the president, Hillary and most Democrats are trying to save Obama’s signature piece of legislation by proposing more taxes on us, more borrowing and increased debt to preserve this terrible plan?

The truth is that the ACA plan never had a chance of succeeding. It was designed as a gateway plan that would fail. Americans were expected to ask the federal government to “save” them, and that would lead to a single-payer option run by the government. Imagine the federal government telling you who your doctor will be, how much and what treatments you’ll be allowed based on what they’d pay – welcome to socialized medicine.

Obamacare is on a financial trajectory that is unsustainable. Yes, some aspects of it can and should be salvaged, but to do so will require a bi-partisan effort in Congress and a president willing to allow Obama’s signature piece of legislation to be replaced.

Interestingly, how you vote in November will heavily impact the direction our government takes in dealing with your healthcare. But more federal spending won’t solve the problems created by government’s intrusion into a system that wasn’t broken, but simply needed some repairs.

Ron Kauffman is a consultant and expert speaker on issues of aging, Medicare and Obamacare. Ron is the author of “Caring for a Loved One with Alzheimer’s Disease,” available as a Kindle book on Amazon.com. He and his wife may be contacted at 828-696-9799 or by email at  drron561@gmail.com