Others have provided examples; I was actually making the opposite point with respect to the US. "Death panels" was a phrase used by politicians to drum up hysteria around a hypothetical single-payer system refusing to pay for a treatment. My contention is that such hysteria would make it nearly impossible, politically, for a US single-payer system to refuse to pay for any treatment, no matter how expensive or ineffective. This would of course drive up demand and therefore prices even moreso than the already distorted third-party payer system that exists today.