Maybe that's because I agree with you, but it's probably just because you're so sensible

I think there are kind of different angles to this that complicate the issues. Among them are 1) who is making the decision, 2) what is the "default" decision (and what motivates that), and 3) who's paying for the medical care. Let's leave aside the issue of statistics around end of life, last year of life, etc. kind of ignoring the occasional difficulty with knowing that in advance. Obviously we have to deal with these things from a statistical/probability standpoint, while the resulting decisions affect real people.

People hear "death panels" and they think that means nobody over the age of <whatever> will be able to receive medical care and we're just going to tell them all to just go die already. As opposed to saying, age and expected benefit will be factored into the decision about whether Medicare/Medicaid/private insurance/etc. will pay for this treatment, not whether you can get it or not. It's like we want to pretend that we don't all already make medical decisions based (in part) on money, just like every other economic decision in our lives.