Before Obamacare: the only constant is change

How was American health insurance changing before Obamacare?

According to the US Census Bureau, between 2005 and 2010, 18 million Americans stopped getting health insurance from a job. About a third of this was people switching to government insurance (mostly retirees.) Some of it was part of a longer trend of fewer insured dependents, but mostly it was because of people being unemployed for more than 6 months or not getting insurance from their new job.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p70-134.pdf

According to Gallup polls, in between 2008 and 2012, 15 million Americans stopped getting insurance from their job, 8 million started getting insurance from the government and 6 million stopped having insurance.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160676/fewer-americans-getting-health-insurance-employer.aspx

According to Kaiser, in 2014, 154 million Americans got health insurance from a job, 106 million from the government, 19 million got other private insurance (Obamacare exchanges for example) and 42 million were uninsured.

http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population/

Most uninsured Americans were and still are employed workers and their dependents. Their numbers were dramatically increased by the economic crisis, but employers were already cutting back health insurance before the recession. Going back to the way things used to be was never an option.

Most employers only provide insurance because of regulations and incentives, and that system doesn't fit an economy where employers and workers are reinventing themselves every few years. Obamacare's insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion both make more sense than relying on jobs to provide insurance in such a dynamic economy, but the very high cost of healthcare in the United States means Obamacare is also forcing millions of employed workers to spend thousands of dollars on insurance instead of other things those Americans need just as much, like homes and businesses.