Tweet
Life is supposed to be simple for Republicans, who don’t like questions about nasty details and complications like 1) people who are born with an illness or condition that is labeled “pre-existing” from a health insurance perspective; 2) can’t get insurance because of those conditions. You are just a problem they’d like to gloss over.
Mittens showed just how intellectually bankrupt this party is when it comes to addressing one of the most important economic and social issues in the country today — the broken health care system. It works for them – it works for anyone who has enough money to buy the best health care in the world. But it leaves the rest of us — and I am one of those people with pre-existing conditions — perpetually in fear of losing health insurance, being denied coverage if switching employers, wondering if the coverage one has is even adequate if medical situations arise that are expensive to treat and questioned by the insurance company.
This unbelievable exchange between Mitt Romney and comedian Jay Leno is evidence that he hasn’t even thought through a good bullsh*t answer. (Think Progress):
ROMNEY: People with pre-existing conditions, as long as they have been insured before, they are going to be able to continue to have insurance.
LENO: Suppose they haven’t been insured before?
ROMNEY: Well, if they are 45 years old and they show up and say I want insurance because I have heart disease, it’s like, ‘Hey guys. We can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you are well and then if you get ill, you are going to be covered. [...]
We’ll look at a circumstance where someone is ill and hasn’t been insured so far, but people who have the chance to be insured –- if you are working in the auto business for instance, the companies carry insurance, they insure their employees, you look at the circumstances that exist –- but people who have done their best to get insured are going to be able to be covered. But you don’t want everyone saying, ‘I am going to sit back until I get sick and then go buy insurance.’ That doesn’t make sense. But you get defined rules and get people in who are playing by the rules.
Without the mandate, healthy people could forego buying insurance until they became sick, thus driving up costs for everyone and potentially collapsing the system as there may not be enough people paying into the system to cover the costs of all the sick people. Moreover, there are people who, from a young age or even birth, have preexisting conditions due to congenital diseases.
Under Romney’s current plan, since they have no existing history of coverage, it’s conceivable people born with preexisting conditions would be completely unable to ever get insurance. Insurance companies have already said that without the mandate, they’d go back to denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions.
61 Comments
Romney’s spoken English is perilously close in style to that of Sarah Palin. Also, from his ridiculous response, it appears he has never heard of people with insurance getting dropped by insurance companies that don’t want to make good on their policies.
Yeah, I don’t have house insurance I’m just going to wait until fire strikes, then retroactively put in a claim after paying just one months premium.
I’m guessing my $250K 1970′s ranch, will be replaced with a new “green” building.
Awesome!!!!
I wonder how Romney will decide if people have “done their best”.
.
Why does anyone need health insurance? Why can’t the United States provide its people with affordable health care like EVERY civilized nation on the planet?
Because health insurance is a for-profit business. Congress has tried to subsidize it through the ACA. Hopefully SCOTUS will dial that misstep back.
Nationalize health care. Then watch the cost of health care miraculously become affordable to all.
Oh, and btw, those of you who think it’s just great that everyone will have to buy insurance under ACA: There is NO provision in ACA WHATSOEVER to control, oversee, administer or have any input on premiums charged.
There is NO provision in ACA WHATSOEVER to control, oversee, administer or have any input on premiums charged.
It is a MYTH that insurers don’t offer coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. In my state, it is ILLEGAL for a health insurance carrier to deny anyone coverage because of a health condition. HOWEVER, health insurers can charge WHATEVER THEY WANT for people with pre-existing conditions.
This will NOT CHANGE under ACA. If you think it will, you need to reread the act. Ordinarily when a public agency deputizes or authorizes a private company to act under color of its authority, the private entity assumes all the characteristics of the public agency; to wit; accountability, control, oversight and public administration.
But, the ACA is a blank check written on YOUR and MY bank account to the insurance industry. I give it six months before the abuse starts. Wait and see how your “minimum limits” policy ends up costing you as much as Cobra coverage. Mark these words, peeps, it’s just a matter of time.
Hey Willard
There a certain insurance companies, in the center of the country, after insuring you for 15 of your best years closes that class your of policies. Of course their salesman said that rarely, if ever, happens.
They do give you a certificate of insurability after cherry picking your ass though.
And your claim will be denied because you insured after the peril. Your point?
Well, one way or another we all should pay our fair share of the cost of health care. I agree paying money for shitty insurance is not the way to go. But we need something. Pre existing conditions are just one reason. There is no reason on earth why Obamacare cannot be improved, including regulations on the insurance companies. The act does provide for subsidy to lower income people and those who have insurance at work do not need any more. That too can be improved. What I do not see happening anytime soon is suddenly everyone agrees on a national plan. Maybe I am wrong about that. What happens if the law is struck down? If you are young and healthy, hell why buy nsurance or chip in a tax for health care?
Our only hope is once the whole law is chucked is to force Obama and the Dem Party to fight for Single Payer. You know the Grover Norquist ‘No New Tax’ Pledge? We need a ‘Single Payer Pledge’. Get OWS to insist upon it. Any turncoat Dem who doesn’t sign it won’t get our vote and instead will get the Middle Finger: work to defeat them in the primaries and if they prevail over a signatory challenge Dem, abandon them in the General election. No money, no campaign volunteering, no vote
@marblex
Health insurance doesn’t need to be for profit. Lots of Americans seem to have this absurd idea that so-called “single payer” systems are the perfect utopia. They aren’t. In fact few countries have them.
The most common for of health care is a multi-tier system where you have a government regulated public market that has to provide certain standards and insure everyone. Beyond that, there is a private market for people who want better service. Usually that just means you can have a single room, better food and easier access to higher ranking doctors. Elective procedures might be covered me. But basic medical care is all covered by public insurance.
It’s also possible to mix tax funded health care and public insurance so that the costs for people are lower.
No, see, my house wasn’t fully destroyed and I can still live in it, there are some holes and black rooms, and some other pre-existing conditions form the fire.
So, with my partially burned down home I’m simply going to get insurance pay a months worth of premium and then claim that a leak has developed in my roof, therefore, I will need a new roof and other things.
It’s great, this pre-existing fire damage, I can make all kinds of claims even though I told them about the fire I had.
Also, one of the rooms collapsed after I got the insurance–it was burnt pretty badly–so I cn get that room covered as well.
Isn’t this great?
Good luck with that.
Good luck with that, it will be another 20 years before the left gets another chance to bring forth this statist goal.
In the meantime, the ACA, will just linger like a rotten fart.
I like the Grayson plan. If you get sick, die quickly.
But isn’t that exactly what would happen if I had a pre-existing medical condition?
Under Romney’s plan Santorum’s daughter doesn’t get health insurance because she was BORN with a pre existing condition. Romney should be ashamed of himself.
Not if you always were covered. That is the idea behind the mandate. But there are people who were born with these conditions, etc. erc
Fine, create a tax that goes into a pool that is used to offset the cost of insurance of babies with pre-existing conditions.
You don’t need to fundamentally alter the relationship between the individual and the government to address this issue.
How would you like it if the government told you you have to buy a handgun because doing so would help keep the prices of property insurance affordable for everyone?
Because if this mandate is allowed, the door opens for just such a scenario to unfold.
Mitt Romney looked really wobbly on the Leno show. But he looks wobbly almost all the time on TV. The voters don’t like the mandate but a strong majority like Obama. While I think the ACA is really bad policy the messenger is well liked. So, Romney is leading the charge against this bad policy and nobody likes him as a messenger. And what, pray tell, happens to that message? Who really thinks the Republicans have a winner in 2012? And all the intraparty hostility to Obama will not prevent him from winning. Going forward, we might get better healthcare from our individual states as the Feds merely play backstop. A former medical executive said that if the state of Oregon adopted a single payer type hybrid by itself approximately 400-500K Californians would move into the state. Who knows! But I’ll wager that people will chase healthcare from one corner of this country to another until they get some relief for what ails us all.
Before the current Health care act, if you had group insurance from your employer and during that time developed a pre-existing condition, then later lost your job, and your new job didn’t offer group health, you would be forced to try to buy private insurance, which could(and would) turn you down, or rescind you later(which is much much worse). Then your only option would be to try to get on your states emergency insurance, which historically have had very long wait lists.
So it actually was very difficult for anyone with a pre-existing condition to remain insured, even if they absolutely wanted to.
Is Mitts plan going to only start requiring continuous coverage, after is starts, or will it mean that all those who didn’t have continuous coverage before Romneys plan also be excluded for pre-existing conditions?
Your handgun just shot a hole in my gov’t mandated condom but I’m sure you saw that on my gov’t mandated home surveillance camera. Where are those pesky catholics when my condom has a hole in it from killing the sacred sperm by gunshot wounds? And, please, don’t ask how the sacred sperm got there in the first place. Consult the camera, please.
Single payer isn’t utopia. However, the mandate-to-buy not only doesn’t fix the underlying cause of our broken health care system (selling lifesaving services for a profit), it makes it worse — it creates an artificial government bailout forcing people to buy the product even if they can’t afford it or don’t believe they’ll get sick.
Of course people will put off buying insurance until the last possible moment. That’s how the game plays; as a consumer, I don’t want to pay insurance premiums that I think I have no likelihood of recouping. With a free market, at least I have that choice — I can simply NOT buy the insurance and take my risks. Once you mandate purchase, however, you not only DON’T fix the broken insurance we have — and trust me, it IS broken; even those of us with pretty decent health coverage are regularly bankrupted by major medical issues… it’s not like having insurance is some sort of utopia, either! — but it removes the consumer’s ability to simply opt out of the system.
The problem with the ACA is that it’s a half-assed solution that doesn’t actually make anything better. A few more percent get health insurance — mostly due to the mandate — but there’s no analysis of access to care or affordability of care, which are the two most important metrics of the health care system! That’s why I opposed the ACA; it’s not because I hate poor or sick people. It’s because I felt like, as tough as it was, as crappy as it is to pit one demographic (the very poor) against another demographic (the very sick), it’s simply NOT the right solution to just force everyone to buy insurance, tweak the eligibility requirements a tiny bit, and say “there, I fixed it for you.”
It’s possible to oppose the ACA and be very progressive. Those of us who oppose it are not closet Republicans. And we’re not just sour grapes “it’s not single-payer, so it’s not acceptable” puritans, either. Many of us really think that the ACA will make things worse in the long run, by essentially locking us in, as a nation, to a fundamentally broken system. Incidentally, by successfully playing one faction in the liberal/progressive wing of the Democratic party against each other, the lobbyists who fought for and got the mandate-to-buy have shown how willing to tear each other apart over doctrinal differences.
Please at least accept that there are progressives who earnestly believe that the ACA is fundamentally flawed to the point where it will make things worse. You don’t have to agree, of course, and it’s human nature to look out for our personal self-interest; if you’ll gain health care under the ACA, that’s great for you. But it’s also very possible to think the ACA is very, very bad policy — and to be somewhat happy at the prospect of it being struck down — without being a Republican shill or a crazy ideological purist.
The mandate will not drive down costs much, if at all. The mandate is a give-away to insurance companies. Now, everyone will be forced to buy exorbitant and crappy insurance.
The best way to drive down costs is with a single-payer national plan.
Incidentally, Medicare for All polled at wildly popular levels. It would have none of the Constitutionality issues of the ACA (which isn’t to say that Republicans wouldn’t oppose it tooth and nail, but they wouldn’t have the same Constitutional grounds to oppose it in court). It would require expanding an existing system, as opposed to building an entire new one. And the entire bill could be written in a few dozen pages of easy-to-understand language, as opposed to the hundreds? thousands? of pages of the ACA — littered with carve-outs and handouts to the big lobbyists.
And it’s single payer. And we could have done it. But it was never even on the table.
In my mind, that tells me as much as you need to know about whether the ACA is really an “incremental improvement,” or is — as I and others have claimed — a “giant handjob to the insurance industry.”
Romney is a heartless, cold, rich, pampered prick.
There changed it for you. This is what the Obama administration is arguing for in the Supreme Court…unless they get the mandate, the Obama administration is affirmatively arguing to dump insurance companies from having to take those with pre-existing conditions. SCOTUS had to find someone else outside the Obama admin to argue that you can just get rid of the mandate while being able to keep all the other stuff.
So you want corporations running the country? Don’t you want corporations regulated? Companies can say what they like, but that is a reason to be on the side of corporations.
Don’t hold your breath. Once this law is struck down , no one is going to want to touch this thing for a long time. Everyone is going to be on their own.
You are being too kind. This assumes that Willard is human, whereas I have grave doubts. His father was an estimable individual in many ways. What went wrong?
And today SCOTUS just told Obama that the entire law WILL BE STRUCK DOWN.
This is a wrap folks, now let’s get down to business, unwinding the parts of the law that are in effect now, so maybe businesses will get back to hiring.
Actually, this crappy system doesn’t work for most of the Americans who loudly support what Republicans have been saying for at least 20 years, either.
Meanwhile, Democrats want us to believe that they couldn’t have done more to CHANGE this system.
I’m calling bullshit.
Obama, you suck.
Reid, you suck just as bad.
Medicare will come eventually, probably another 15-20 years. First there must come a system that becomes so unsustainable that a radical change is called for. That is where the ACA comes into play. All it does is continue to make healthcare a for profit entity enriching health insurance and drug companies. Both those industries had a hand in crafting that bill.
The fact that the Obama WH is now gladly referring to the ACA as Obamacare tells me that the fix is already in at the SCOTUS. I’d say 6-3, with Kennedy and Roberts and the 4 libs.
I’m of mixed minds. Throwing out the act as unconstitutional makes the Tea Party wing of the GOP jump for joy, and who wants to see them happy? However, keeping the mandate and the overall law in place only forestalls the inevitable necessity of universal coverage for many years.
Pam writes:
I’m confused. Is Pam actually supporting the mandate as it’s currently configured.
If so, she needs to think it through!
I’ll put it another way:
Without the mandate, the health insurance industry wins.
With the mandate, the health insurance industry wins even bigger.
Get the picture?
Yeah, well, that’s what they do. I do have some ambivalence about this whole affair. No doubt medicare for all would be better, much better.
But two things. First what now? Back to the old way, back to no coverage? Not really acceptable to me or for a country of over 300 million people with 50 million or so uninsured. So the next fight starts now.
Secondly, not being a lawyer and all, I don’t buy the stuff about, now you gotta buy this gun or that other thing. This is qualitatively a different matter. So where do five or even six supreme assholes get off telling the elected oficials in a democracy how to run the country. First citizens united and now this? Fuck no.
Guess I shoulda been a lawyer sos I could unerstan this shit.
I have to question the grasp of economics of anyone who thinks the ACA has anything to do with the fact that businesses aren’t hiring.
Human beings are not houses.
Yes.
If (when) the Republicans return to power, we can either spend time complaining about whatever they’re doing, or we can go to work cleaning up the Democratic Party and wiping the DINOs out of it.
Last time, we complained about Bush while Rahm filled the Democratic Party with a$$holes.
The fact is that Obama and these Democrats threw away the opportunity to deliver real CHANGE. Rather than lament the collapse of Obama’s bs health care “reform,” we need to use this as an opportunity to refight the battle and make sure we are positioned to get real CHANGE (the mandate as it’s currently configured ain’t it).
Don’t go off half cocked with your gov’t mandated handgun. I think they’re still deciding. Regardless, you can cheer all you want but people with pre-existing conditions may die or be bankrupted. But, principled people can live with that it seems. For myself and my buddies we don’t have insurance. Since our wives have pre-existing conditions we chose to insure them rather than ourselves when COBRA ran out. Wow, at least I didn’t invest in broccoli futures. I’m going a hot dish of principle right over to the sick children sleeping in that broken down car. Maybe their diabetic mother can be revived from her coma and see her children eat a nice nourishing meal of bread, water and principle. Yum.
It’s Magical Hypercapitalist Economics: the solution to every problem is always to deregulate and shovel more money at rich people. Also: government protection of private property and enforcement of contracts, union-busting, suppression of dissent, etc. doesn’t count as “statism”, but trying to get the government to do anything to benefit the public does (and thus is evil).
You want government to have concern for the public or for the common good?
How dare you!
/s
Again, then you are telling me you want someone else to pay for your misfortune.
The government could address the issue of pre-existing condtions separately now couldn’t they, we do not need socialized medicine to address this do we?
Make a law that would allow insurance companies to charge market rates for premiums attached to people with pre-existing conditions–in it they could not deny coverage.
Raise a tax to help offset the cost to people who were born with these issues.
You don’t need to destroy the enumerated powers under the Constitution to address this issue.
Perhaps you dont understand what the role of the govnerment was intended to be when this country was established.
Single-payer doesn’t “destroy the enumerated powers under the Constitution.” Had Obama and the sellout Democrats just lifted a finger to get the public option, for example, we wouldn’t be having a discussion about Constitutionality at all. It simply would be Constitutional.
Btw, are you supporting the broken system that we had before Obama got elected?
Everyone’s known that the system was broken since Nixon (it just got worse since then). If you’re supporting the broken system that we had before Obama got elected, you might want to catch up with current events, say the last 4 decades…
Furthermore, why can’t I buy insurance across state lines, and why do I have to choose plans that have coverage for things I couldn’t possibly need?
Should we not try and fix some of these very basic flaws before we decide to throw the very notion of enumerated powers out the window?
If the list of enumerated powers was not put forth by the founding fathers to prevent this very type of law from being enacted, then what was its purpose?
Nobody can answer that, including team Obama and his stumbling, bumbling, SG–who by the way is a national here in my eyes, as he has done more to ensure that freedom and liberty remain intact in this country than any tea party wanna be ever could!!!! LOL!!!!!
To enable those who would pursue profit up to and beyond the detriment of their fellow citizens and even to the detriment of the common good of the American people?
Is that the role of government?
Maybe I’m just misunderstanding what you’re saying…
Factually, you are correct, but single payer was never a realistic option, no matter how much you think it could have passed.
I agree re single payer.
But I specifically named the public option, which would have passed if anyone in power had actually worked to make it pass.
As if. The power of the Constitution is only as strong as its’ weakest link. If and when the ACA is overturned we’ll see what breaks loose and what holds. I’m not fooling myself in knowing this ACA is good but your argument would be the last one I’d resort to in making that case. Your tell about socialized medicine should be applied to where it might do some real good. Try socialized banking for the rich next time. Or socialized warfare for those who think we must all pay taxes for that. Or socialized murder for the police state that was responsible for the law of Stand Your Ground. I’m sure a surtax or tinkering here and there with the tax code will be the cureall.
Again, you are ignoring the law of economics.
There is no practical way for insurance to work if you do not allow companies to manage risk.
I’m not ignoring the people element here, but the financial statements of a company do not care about people, the laws of economics do not care about people.
If a company cannot cover its profits and will cease to exist.
If I knew I could get coverage for a pre-existing condition why would I buy anything other than the lowest form of insurance.
For exmaple, I’m healthy and only worry about broken bones, flu, etc., so I get the lowest cost plan available, which doesn’t cover major diseaes, then one day I find out I have cancer.
What am I going to do as a rational economic agent?
I’m going to cancel my current insurance, and go find another policy, and because the law stiulates I cannot be denied because of my pre-existing cancer, I can get the better insurance and simply pay my premiums and I’m covered.
This is but jsut one example of why free market econoics is far better than any socialist approach.
Do you deny that pre-existing conditions could not be tackled in a less intrusive manner than what is proposed under the ACA?
Really, the ACA is the only way forward on this?
Your tenous position could not be any easier to refute.
See you live in a world of ideals, whereas, I live in a world of reality.
You want everyone to have insurance, because under such a system you believe more people would live better lives than they do now. But this is a false vision.
Take Canada for example, why is it that the Canadian healthcare industry is desperately looking toward free market solutions to the severe crisis its facing related to wait times, and resource shortages?
If socialized medicine is more humane, why look toward a capilastic crutch?
And finally, why do politicians and sprots stars in Canada get to jump the line, when the law is explicit that everyone must wait there turn.
Is that just and fair, or is that just part of the false hope associated with Marxisim?
You manage risk by managing your costs as well as your income. Back during the debate on ACA Obama gave up hundreds of billions of dollars to drug industry, hospitals, etc by not allowing the Dorgan amendment, drug re-importation, etc. As rational economic agents, the insurance companies should this time support Dorgan, etc.
No one’s arguing about the need for companies to make profit in order to exist. They do. Do they need to make excessive profits, most of which doesn’t trickle down to their own employees or serve anyone’s interests other than those of a very, very few? They do not.
Enter the public option.
It would force companies to treat their customers better, or run the risk of losing them to a system that isn’t about making profit and doesn’t need to make a profit in order to continue existing.
Re pre-existing conditions, I’d argue that your point is without merit because, according to your own argument, you yourself would be screwed if something were to happen to you, a healthy person who only worries about broken bones, flu, etc., and so gets the lowest cost plan available, which doesn’t cover major diseaes, only to find out one day that you have cancer.
First, you’re not acting in your own self-interests (most likely because you’re one of the 99% who can’t). The system you’re defending sucks.
Second, your point seems to be based on a hypothetical and isn’t about the way things work out here in the real world.
Geez. The Canadians I know like their system. And what part of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is Marxist if you think Life means sustaining and nourishing working adults with pre-existing conditions who are taxpayers? And they have sport stars that can’t afford supplemental insurance provided by private insurers? Guess they’re not paying them enough to win some sort of championship besides hockey. Now, my Canadian acquaintances do like their hockey but I’ll tell them about their sport stars’ suffering and I’m sure they’ll buy them some better insurance.
Technically I have a preexisting condition because I had jaundice as an infant. The reason I had jaundice? I was induced on my due date instead of being born two to three weeks late like my brothers were in order to prevent placental deterioration due to gestational diabetes which had the side affect of preventing me from being strangled by the umbelical cord.
It’s more realistic than the fairytale notion that private for profit insurance companies aren’t going to be more concerned with their bottom line than with providing the care that its consumers actually pay for.
There is actually evidence to suggest that the single payer system we use for the elderly in this country actually has been the most capable at controlling cost.
Go ahead and try to find me evidence that the for profit system we have is efficient and capable of that. I’ll try not to hold my breath waiting while you google.
Yes by all means lets compare the Canadian system with our own
They rank 30th and we rank 37th.
We pay almost twice per capita in spending and still have a shorter life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates.
Do you even research stuff before you make statements or do you just make random arguments and hope no one else actually knows anything about the subject?
What the hell? Is Pam Spaulding really this intellectually dishonest? That’s not what Romney was saying. At all.
First of all, in Massachusetts there have been a percentage of people trying to game the system. That is what Romney is referring to.
Secondly, to so misrepresent Romney’s position on the issue reveals Spaulding’s disingenuous attempt at obfuscation.
Thirdly, I’m sorry for Spaulding’s health issues; but she always has the option of telling the Insurance Company to GO TO HELL and getting on Medicaid, thereby forcing the state to pay–which is PRECISELY WHAT OBAMACARE DOES!
First of all, in Massachusetts there have been a percentage of people trying to game the system. That is what Romney is referring to.
Okay I really have to laugh at this statement.
God forbid we have people “gaming the system.” It’s so darn unfair that those HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES that have deliberately denied care and tossed people off the roles not get the premiums of those horrible terrible awful “game the system” people.
I guess it’s too much to suggest that it’s pot meet kettle time considering the insurance companies have been “gaming the system” for far longer than those Massachussets residents.
So when is Willard on Letterman?
Would love to see Dave’s questions. Probably not until Joe Smith is reincarnated.
Can’t we just all agree that both Obama and Romney suck and that, on this issue, they’re both losers?
Meanwhile, gotta call bullshit on this nonsense:
The state and the insured were forced to pay before Obamacare every time someone who didn’t have insurance showed up at the ER.
Obamacare, aka the Republican health care proposal from the 1990s, forces citizens to pay (either by buying insurance or by paying a penalty to the govt) so that the insurance companies can make buckets more money than they already do!
Let’s not forget, the insurance companies have been rejecting people for the most trivial of ‘pre-existing conditions.’
Have asthma? You’re uninsurable. Get migraines or seasonal allergies? Uninsurable (these last two are why I could not get insurance until the ACA high risk pool came along). Psoriasis? Uninsurable. Mild arthritis? Uninsurable. Back trouble? Breast implants? Overweight?
All of these have been cited as reasons for rejection by insurance companies.
They don’t want anybody who has ever or will soon likely make any use of health care.
To protect the opulent from the tyranny of the majority.
That’s a paraphrase, but very very close to what James Madison said was the purpose of the Constitution. Google it without quotes; you’ll find it.
The Founding Fathers were surprisingly brash in their forthright insistence that a centralized Republic was necessary: so the masses wouldn’t get unruly and expect things like food, shelter and medicine. Which was why so many of the poor, the indentured servants and the slaves were abandoning “civilization” to go live with the Native Americans: people who had learned to share.
(We’re supposed to learn it in kindergarten. But every history class, every corporate-sponsored educational film and everything whatsoever on TV tells us otherwise. It’s a zero-sum game; I’ve got mine, so screw you Charlie.)
Corporate personhood was discovered (literally!) in the margins of law books in the late 19th century. But the real class war–that of the 1% against the 99%–has been going on since Day One. It’s only that the attorneys who work for the 1% have been getting more clever with the passage of time.