Sarah Palin and the anti-healthcare yahoos have made a huge fuss about government bureaucrats deciding when grandma should die. News Flash: This has already been going on for years, and will continue as long as insurance company drones are in charge.
What do I mean? Let's say your seventy-five year old grandmother, Helen, will die if she doesn't have a liver transplant. You've paid your premiums to Blue Cross on time for years. Who will decide if Helen gets that liver transplant? The Blue Cross equivalent of a government bureaucrat, some mousy little sadist with a pen and a calculator, who gets a hefty bonus every time he finds some reason to deny a claim. Yes, these scumbags really exist, and every insurance company employs them.
So what will this guy do to figure out a way to deny Grandma Helen her expensive liver transplant? Almost anything. He needs that bonus to buy a new car. So he'll look over her record and discover that she had strep throat when she was 6 and, given that this is a pre-existing condition that Helen didn't mention in her Blue Cross application, he will deny the claim. Grandma Helen will die a miserable death. The mousy guy will get a bonus and buy a new car.
If this isn't a death panel, I don't know what is. It's just costing us more.