The Affordable Care Act creates death panels
| The Affordable Care Act creates death panels | |
|---|---|
| FALSE | |
| "Health care reform proposed by President Obama in 2009 would create "death panels" of government bureaucrats who would decide whether elderly and disabled people were worthy of medical care." | |
| Domain | Politics & Elections |
| Tactic | Propaganda Technique False Context |
| Era | Current |
| First seen | 2009 |
| Origin | A Facebook post by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on August 7, 2009, building on earlier claims about a provision for end-of-life counseling in a House health care bill |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-27 |
| Further reading: books on Politics & Elections | |
The claim that the Affordable Care Act creates death panels became one of the most influential pieces of political misinformation of the debate over health care reform in 2009. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wrote that under the proposed reform, her parents or her son with Down syndrome would have to stand before Obama's "death panel" so that bureaucrats could decide whether they were worthy of health care. No such panel existed in any bill. The claim distorted a provision that would have allowed Medicare to pay doctors for voluntary consultations with patients about advance care planning, such as living wills, if patients wanted them. PolitiFact named "death panels" its 2009 Lie of the Year.
The claim
Palin's post on August 7, 2009, described an "evil" system in which bureaucrats would decide, based on a subjective judgment of a person's level of productivity in society, whether they deserved care. Other critics had already claimed that a section of the House bill would require elderly people to receive counseling encouraging them to end their lives. The phrase spread rapidly through talk radio, cable news and town hall meetings that summer.
What the evidence shows
- The actual provision. Section 1233 of the House bill, H.R. 3200, would have allowed Medicare to reimburse doctors for an optional consultation, once every five years or more often if a patient's health changed, about advance care planning: options such as living wills, health care proxies and hospice. Patients would choose whether to have such a conversation. Similar ideas had previously drawn support from members of both parties, including Republican Senator Johnny Isakson.
- No panels. No version of the legislation created any panel to decide individuals' eligibility for care.
- Fact-checkers. PolitiFact, FactCheck.org and others found the claim false. PolitiFact chose it as Lie of the Year for 2009.
- The provision was dropped. Amid the uproar, the end-of-life counseling provision was removed from the final Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. In 2016 Medicare began reimbursing advance care planning conversations through a regulation, with little controversy.
- The IPAB. Critics later applied the "death panel" label to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, created by the ACA to recommend Medicare spending reductions. The law explicitly prohibited it from rationing care or making decisions about individuals' treatment. It never became operational and was repealed in 2018.
Why it persists
The phrase was vivid, frightening and easy to repeat, and it tapped into real anxieties about government involvement in health care and about the treatment of the elderly and disabled. Polls in August 2009 found that a large share of Americans believed the claim or were unsure. Researchers have used it as a case study in how misinformation can persist even after correction, partly because repeating a myth to debunk it can reinforce it.
Lessons for readers
- Read the actual text of legislation rather than descriptions of it.
- Notice when a voluntary provision is described as mandatory.
- Emotional language, such as "death panels," is designed to bypass analysis.
- Ask whether a claimed body or process exists anywhere in the law.
- Be aware that corrections can struggle to catch up with vivid slogans.
See also
- If you like your health care plan, you can keep it
- Republicans' 2025 tax law cut Medicare
- The Misinformation Age (O'Connor and Weatherall)
Sources
- Sarah Palin, "Statement on the Current Health Care Debate," Facebook, August 7, 2009.
- America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, H.R. 3200, Section 1233.
- Angie Drobnic Holan, "PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: 'Death panels'," PolitiFact, December 18, 2009.
- Brendan Nyhan, "Why the 'Death Panel' Myth Wouldn't Die: Misinformation in the Health Care Reform Debate," The Forum 8, no. 1 (2010).