Listen now (29 mins) | Listen Now The lowlight during the 2009-2010 ACA debate was Governor Palin's invention of "death panels" (PolitiFact's 2009 "Lie of the Year") in response to a proposal to allow Medicare to pay physicians whom voluntarily counsel patients about advanced care planning or directives. The fear mongering was so convincing the proposal was dropped by the Congress and later, via rule making, by the White House. The facts remain that while far and away most Americans die of a long term chronic, eventually fatal ilness/es, according to AHRQ, Pew and others only approximately twenty to thirty percent of Americans have an advanced directive or a living will including those severely or terminally ill.