Any majorly crappy idea takes a while to get off the ground precisely due to the number of people who can recognize its hazards. The standard success model is to wait until these people die off, while dumbing down the school system and amping up the media propaganda ... all the while hoping a plausible excuse comes along.

The EU celebtated its 50th anniversary just a few years ago. How many people were aware of it the first 30 years?

On to death panels. The first step was to take healthcare over. The next step will be rationing, as a consequence.

This is going to cause a major quality drop in med services for those people whose future productive economic value is deemed to be less than the cost of treating them. They will be not-so-subtly steered in the direction of offing themselves. (See the writings of Ezekiel Emanuel & Cass Sunstein)

Anyway, on with the show ...

Death Panels on Steroids
http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/25/death-panels-on-steroids/

Redefining Physicians' Role in Assisted Dying
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1205283

It'll take maybe ~10 years to get the concept generally accepted. This will be done by making any alternatives prohibitively expensive.

What was criminal when Jack Kevorkian did it will become standard procedure for the terminally ill (or not-so-useful eaters). From pulling a tooth to pulling the plug ...

Or, like Britain, they could always just dump you outside, alone, in the middle of the night. Oops.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/04/12/patients-discharged-at-night-nhs-hundreds-of-thousands-elderly-frail_n_1419979.html