info@iMedSocial.com www.iMedSocial.com

Return of the Death Panel: Romney vs Obama

Abstract – The term “death panel” represents one of the most explosive issues of healthcare. On the

one hand, evidence based medicine advocates argue that end of life care must conform to best medical

practices for alleviating suffering and preventing unnecessary care; on the other hand, opponents fear

that such medical practices will lead to rationing and denial of medical treatment for the elderly.

iMedSocial examines the prevalence of references to “death panels” in our social media conversations

during this presidential election season.

Introduction

The term “death panel” is emotionally evocative – and intentionally so; those who use this term allege

that healthcare reform in the US will lead to denial of medical treatment for the elderly and chronically

ill, thereby causing premature deaths. The flames were further fanned when Steven Rattner, a former

adviser to President Barack Obama, seemed to call for “death panels” in a recent opinion piece in the

New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/opinion/health-care-reform-beyond-

obamacare.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0). Various media articles reported this call and added their own

commentary (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/02/Former-Obama-Adviser-We-

Need-Death-Panels).

Unfortunately the terms “end of life care” and “death panel” seem to have become synonymous in the

public’s mind, as witnessed by the above two articles. Therefore, we looked at both aspects of this

debate – the “end of life care” vs “death panel” description of what should happen in healthcare at the

end of our lives – to see how we discuss this very sensitive issue in social media.

Our Analysis

Our search included various terms related to “death panels”, “rationing” and “euthanasia” on the one

hand, and less emotional terms such as “end of life”, “hospice” and “palliative” on the other hand, as

combined with either “Romney” or “Obama” in separate searches, in the US only, between August 15 to

Oct 12 2012.

All search terms – searched with both candidates

Figure 1 shows that all of these search terms in combination were actually discussed with both

candidates in roughly equal proportions. However, “Obama” was somewhat more popular than

“Romney” in conjunction with these terms.

2

info@iMedSocial.com www.iMedSocial.com

Figure 1 – all search terms have similar popularity

However, the highest percentage of hits for these terms in combination and “Obama” were found on

message boards (35%), followed by traditional on-line media (29%), social networks such as Facebook

(just under 18%), blogs (11%) and microblogs such as Twitter (7.35%). By contrast, for these terms in

combination and “Romney”, the highest percentage of hits were found on traditional on-line media

(about 35%), followed by message boards (32%), social networks and blogs (each just under 14%), and

microblogs (5%).

Similar results were found for the more explosive term “death panel” as shown in Figure 2; furthermore,

most of the hits found for the more general collection of terms can actually be attributed to the term

“death panel”, as can be seen by comparing Figures 1 and 2.

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

14008

/15

/20

12

8/1

9/2

01

2

8/2

3/2

01

2

8/2

7/2

01

2

8/3

1/2

01

2

9/4

/20

12

9/8

/20

12

9/1

2/2

01

2

9/1

6/2

01

2

9/2

0/2

01

2

9/2

4/2

01

2

9/2

8/2

01

2

10

/2/2

01

2

10

/6/2

01

2

10

/10

/20

12

Romney

Obama

3

info@iMedSocial.com www.iMedSocial.com

Figure 2 – “death panel” and Obama/Romney have similar results

We then considered whether “death panel” or “insurance” would be more popular with each

presidential candidate on social media, but in fact they provided similar results, as shown in Figures 3A

(Obama) and 3B (Romney).

Figure 3A – death panel vs insurance for Obama

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

10008

/15

/20

12

8/1

9/2

01

2

8/2

3/2

01

2

8/2

7/2

01

2

8/3

1/2

01

2

9/4

/20

12

9/8

/20

12

9/1

2/2

01

2

9/1

6/2

01

2

9/2

0/2

01

2

9/2

4/2

01

2

9/2

8/2

01

2

10

/2/2

01

2

10

/6/2

01

2

10

/10

/20

12

Romney

Obama

4

info@iMedSocial.com www.iMedSocial.com

Figure 3B – death panel vs insurance for Romney

One interesting element is that in July 2012, both “death panels” and “insurance” scored relatively at a

lower level for “Romney” in regard to such end of life social media conversations, as opposed to

“Obama”. However, both “Obama” and “Romney” show close tracking between insurance and death

panels on social media with regard to end of life care.

Interestingly, similar results were found between “death panels” and “Obamacare” for both men,

especially during August – October 2012.

Conclusions

End of life care decisions, whether described as “living wills”, “death panels”, “hospice” or “palliative”

care or indeed any of the other words (having a greater or lesser emotional impact) that we searched,

are intimately entwined with the presidential campaign. Furthermore, these words are also entangled

with other sensitive topics, such as “insurance” and “Obamacare”. Recently, both candidates have

shown similar levels of social media conversations for these topics –and these topics have been peaking

recently, showing greater levels of social media interest in October 2012 as opposed to May-August

2012.

If you are interested in our social media analyses, for Twitter or any other type of social media, please

email us at info@imedsocial.com. We would be happy to discuss such analyses and our tips for successful

social media campaigns, particularly in the areas of hospitals and medical care providers, and also life

science companies, including pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies, as well as suppliers

to hospital and medical care providers.