George Will Writes Good Opinion Piece About Civil Forfeiture

One of the ways the government has attacked private property rights is with a method of law enforcement known as civil forfeiture.  Civil forfeiture is generally a process by which government confiscates property which is involved in the commission of a crime.  It started with drugs and money confiscated in a drug bust, but has spread to vehicles, houses and other forms of property.  The corner turned when states and the federal government started to give proceeds from disposal of the seized property to the law enforcement agencies doing the seizure.  That turned civil forfeiture from a law enforcement tool to a profit making activity.  A conviction is unnecessary to keep property in some states.  Property can be seized merely because an officer claimed probable cause.  Laws are written to make the expense and hassle to have property returned to people later found innocent that they usually do not bother. 

States have in general made out of court settlements with people who protest this process.  That has kept a reasonable precedent from being established.  Now, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case out of Indiana.  Hopefully, as George Will writes in this Washington Post column Civil Forfeiture Makes Law Enforcement Lawless... ,  the Supreme Court will soon rule to change that.

Conscious Conservative Health Care

Before health insurance was linked to employment, there was another insurance model. People like Dr. Ron Paul have called it “health insurance like car insurance” to make it easier to understand. These policies were usually called “major medical” or “hospitalization” policies. Some of them were specific, like “cancer” policies, although those were often inferior products.

Health insurance should go away in it s current form. Health insurance currently shifts the cost of healthcare from consumers to employers and the government. That creates an image of a never ending deep pocket that increases the prices charged incredibly. If people had to pay for their own services, the prices of those services who go to what regular people, not a mega-corporation or government agency, can afford.

With a major medical policy, people pay for their own regular visits to the doctor an tests. This sounds horrible because of the inflated pricing, but it wasn’t. Going to a doctor used to cost about $10 ($60-$70 in today’s money) and tests were only a couple of dollars ($10-$15 in today’s money). We were starting to have a comeback of that in our area with $35 medical clinics, until the ACA shut all of them down. What the major medical paid was emergencies that cost more than a preset amount and hospital stays. Another thing with major medical is that they didn’t care about pre-existing conditions, unless it was so far advanced that a person would end up in the hospital soon. There was not an extra cost to insure people with pre-existing conditions, because the insurance company was not on the hook for every doctor’s visit, test, etc.

A couple of government reforms may help facilitate this. One is making medical services and insurance tax deductible for individuals. It is for employers and that is one of the things that supports the employer based health care system. The other is requiring upfront pricing for health care services. Health care is the only service of which I am aware that sends you a bill for thousands of dollars a year after you have agreed upon the price and received the service.  This could simply be abolished by a law rendering these bills void.