On her Facebook page, Sarah Palin recently said "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care." She then urged her supporters to make their voices heard in the health care debate, and emphasizing her fear that "the sick, the elderly, and the disabled" will suffer the most "when they ration care."

This strikes Mike Madden of Salon as highly deceptive. Obama doesn't want to kill your grandma, he writes. The tiny kernel of truth here is that Democrats want Medicare to cover doctor-patient consultations about end of life care for seniors who want them—75% of seniors say they're important, but they're not currently covered. In fact, he writes, death panels already exist—and they're run by insurance companies. According to the AMA, the country's biggest insurance companies denied 2% to 5% of claims last year, often with heartbreaking or outrageous results.

Meanwhile, Jon Stewart probed the questions ordinary citizens have about these 'death panels' in his segment, Healther Skelter: Will the death panels cover everyone? What will our premiums be? Should they be public, or should we try a free-market death panel exchange? Watch the video.