Stop Me Before I Vote Again

There's a lot of confusion about the so-called "death panels". Their proper name is the Citizens' Select Panels for End of Life Consultation. It's similar to a jury. Your end of life consultation will be administered by your peers, in coordination with the Department of Motor Vehicles and your insurance provider, if you have one. If you don't, the DMV will stand in for you.

I sat on a panel today. As a budgetary measure, for cost savings, they're combined with random traffic stops. The police recruit a jury from the cars as they wait to get through the checkpoint. Potential cost-saving consultees are selected at random, often from the same car as the jurists. This is a community-building measure and gives all parties a sense of solidarity, a sense of shared responsibility. The DMV and the insurance providers do a quick cost benefit analysis, which is forwarded to Peter Orszag's office, processed with a spread sheet application and checked for accurate metrics. It's very quick. The results are given to the jury. The consultation itself is outsourced to Xe, Inc, formerly Blackwater. They're trying to clean up their reputation and this private/public partnership is their best opportunity. The vehicles of the consultees are towed away and exchanged for fuel efficient police vehicles; Mercury Mariner hybrid SUVs are very popular.

The policeman who recruited me explained that the consumer-driven, little pun there, reforms are not as popular as he expected, but as the unemployment rate creeps up the compensation for the jurists, who get a $25 per diem and a $5 decider's dividend, will make a big difference. I suppose it will. Yes, I suppose it will.