On Death Panels...
Before we can reasonably discuss death panels, we have to look at medical treatments. Medical treatments fall into one of three categories: (1) Ones that cure (for instance, giving Amoxicillin to a patient with an ear infection< (2) Ones that prolong life (for instance, giving a diuretic to a patient with Congestive Hearth Failure), and (3) Ones that are futile (for instance, performing surgery for prostate cancer on a patient who already has advanced metastatic lung cancer or giving a patient an antibiotic to which the bacteria causing his infection are already resistant).
Nobody is really arguing about those treatments that fall into the third category. Everyone from Hippocrates on down has believed that these are unethical. Every medical intervention carries a potential downside (from something as mild as a drug rash to death) and if it carries no benefit, it’s wrong. Remember, “first do no harm.”
What we as physicians are worried about is the rise of a federal bureaucracy that will begin denying treatments that fall into category 1 or 2 on the basis of cost - something the NHS does in England regularly. This is the sort of bureaucracy that becomes a death panel.
Refuse to discuss this with your physician’s office (’my lawyer and my family, etc. have the info’) and make the point that you will be checking the billing to make sure that the enticement of further payments for such is not fulfilled.