I guess this would be true if we ignored the fact that the “American dream” hasn’t been a possibility for generations of working class Americans.

After all, we’ve had stagnant wages since the 1970s, growing household debt since Ronald Reagan, and the recent attack from the banking and loaning industry (or should I say gambling industry) on the working class has left untold numbers homeless and condemned this generation of new workers to fight for jobs, when approximately 21 percent of our population is unemployed or underemployed, with only one available job for every five unemployed persons.

This legislation does do some good. It phases out the Medicare doughnut hole, directs more funding towards general practice education to try to push medical students to be primary physicians, banning life-time caps on coverage, along with the immediate requirement to cover children regardless of pre-existing conditions.

These are commendable achievements for sure, but they are not a substitute for real health care reform.

About 23 million Americans will be left without access to quality affordable health care and, according to Physicians for a National Health Program, a resulting 23,000 deaths will occur annually.

It will mandate that working families spend more than 9.5 percent of their income on health insurance before they will qualify for subsidies to help pay for insurance, subsidies that will result in a projected $447-billion in corporate welfare to the health insurance companies that deny us the care we have a right to.

What is the price of not being able to pay the exorbitant price of health insurance? Up to 2.5 percent of your income in fines. That’s right, health insurers will get $447 billion from us, but we get stuck with paying 2.5 percent of our income in fines because the crappy product we are required to buy is too expensive.

In Massachusetts, the state whose the health care system provided the model for this bill, 21 percent of the population goes without medical treatment, even though they have insurance, because out-of-pocket expenses, high deductibles and co-pays make paying the cost of treatment impossible.

In 2009, 69 percent of the 1.5 million bankruptcies that occurred that year were due to medical expenses, and 75 percent of those had medical insurance.

With the cap on out of pocket expenses being put at $11,900, and the continual rise of the cost of health care, it is hard to imagine this harsh reality changing due to this faulty legislation. Not to mention that insurance companies will be held virtually unaccountable for jacking up premiums or denying care, and the morally bankrupt and sexist policy of charging the elderly and women more for their health care plans will continue under this legislation.

Even when this bill seems to have good intentions it falls short. For instance, it will require that employers provide health insurance to their employees or face a fine of $2,000 per worker.

When comparing the cost of paying the fine against the cost of insuring their employees the bosses will find, according to the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union, that “in an average shop of 100 workers with a decent but not extravagant health plan, an employer could save $395,000 by canceling insurance and paying the penalty instead. In a shop of 2,000 workers the employer would reap $6.37 million.”

This may result a number of employers dropping health care coverage and requiring employees to purchase more expensive policies on their own.

The Tea Party Nativists and their leaders in the Republican Party have been shouting about how this legislation means the end to capitalism, private insurance, and their whole way of life.

However, the health insurance companies don’t seem to fear this “government takeover of health care.” In fact, many health insurers saw their stocks rise in value since the passage of this legislation.

And why wouldn’t investors be happy? After all, this legislation is requiring everyone to buy their faulty product and promising federal funds to help make it happen.

The truth is that the health insurance industry and pharmaceutical companies have been shaping this bill to suit their desires since the beginning. Does anyone think it is a coincidence that this bill parallels the proposals of the top insurance lobbying group, America’s Health Insurance Plans?

The Workers Party has been a vocal critic of this health care “reform” effort since the beginning, and we need to keep up the heat. This is not health care reform; this is a shoring up of the status quo, and it is a death sentence to thousands of working people.

The problem with our health care system isn’t that the health insurance companies are allowed to cherry-pick the healthy and will continue to do so in other ways, and deny coverage when we need it. No, the problem is that we have allowed for our health care to be run as a capitalist endeavor.

The problem goes to the heart of our economic system. We have allowed a small segment of the population to profit from the illness of others.

Single payer, Medicare-For-All, is the only way to provide quality affordable health care to every individual.

From cradle to grave, guaranteed coverage when you need it for all medical procedures. No more health insurance bureaucrats without any medical education dictating to your doctor what treatments you can and cannot have.

The Democrats think they now have four years, the gap between when the legislation is signed into law and when it is fully enforced, to push health care to the back burner saying that they have fixed the problem for now.

We can’t let this happen. Working people need to stand up and demand what they are entitled to.

We need to stand in solidarity with the growing single-payer labor movement, as well as the physician and nurses’ movements for real universal health care.

This battle gives us the opportunity to unite the working class behind a common demand, and offers a chance to show the capitalist class for the dirty leeches they are!

We must pick up the old labor slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all,” and march forward demanding an end to the inequality, plutocracy and injustice that results from our economic system. Single payer now!