The term "death panel" is a pejorative expression used to describe a hypothetical body that would decide whether elderly or disabled individuals should receive medical care, and therefore live or die. Full definition
Drawing upon evidence from the debates over healthcare reform in both the U.S. and the U.K., where Palin's propagation of the idea of death panels and Labour's insistence that Gove's reforms constituted privatisation «pure and simple» served only to confuse and scare the wider public, Thompson argued that misleading and emotive language is making political reform and compromise harder to achieve. (blog.politics.ox.ac.uk)
Some sources I've seen say that Democrats took it out of the bill, just to try to stop the lie about Death Panels. (politics.stackexchange.com)
This is akin to Sarah Palin's death panel fear — and if it is true, it is a huge lesson for us as we discuss health care reform. (firstthings.com)