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You can just look at UK and you can see that things can be done better. Or Canada...

The NHS is constantly on the verge of collapse.

But never actually collapses.

It hasn't yet, since the taxpayer props it up.

Of course the taxpayer props it up. It is a taxpayer funded system. That is like saying that the taxpayer "props up" the military or the court system.

You can downgrade the military to some extend if costs keep rising, what of the NHS?

You can obviously (i) downgrade the range of treatments that the NHS will pay for, (ii) increase its funding, or (iii) do a do a bit of both.

When you can no longer do (ii), you start to do (i).

But since no one wants either, the pressure usually ends up on doctors. If there is an exodus from the public sector, instead of a slow downgrade, then it will collapse.

edit: the original point is that the US should have a system like the UK - but is the NHS even sustainable?

The NHS is more sustainable than the current US system by virtually any conceivable measure. In fact, the one thing that every political party in the US agrees on is that the system cannot continue in its present form.

The problem of rising healthcare costs is a real one, not an artefact of a particular system, and there is no easy fix for it.

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