For everyone outside of the USA, this whole thing is a buzzword created by the right wing media. Essentially, they believe that with the implementation of national health that there will be government "death panels" that will decide whether people live or die. As is, we already have death panels, they're just run by insurance companies. When it comes to life and death decisions they reason that the matter is best left in the hands of the private sector.

Yeah, I don't get it either.

So-called death panels are a board of doctors (and here, insurance company officials) that decides when a cancerous vegetable with no good prognosis has the plug pulled. American health care is ruined by the fact that people here have forgotten that people eventually die.