While it's easy to focus on the total pointlessness of US insurance companies, the reality is more complex. US hospitals charge absurdly high fees for everything, thus massively inflating the cost of even a brief stay. Doctors massively over-prescribe tests and treatments from fear of being sued by a patient (remember, the USA is the litigation capital of the world, with more lawyers per capita than any other nation on the planet) and this too massively increases costs while yielding no benefits. Meanwhile, US citizens are gorging themselves to death on slop, which creates 50% of the health care burden - all of which is totally unnecessary and also pushes up costs. So sure, it's right to point out that the insurance companies - the real "death panels" - are an evil thing, but so is literally every other aspect of the uniquely dysfunctional US so-called health care system.