Ok so I know that nothing Sarah Palin ever says should be taken as a starting point for an argument, but I'm really confused about the debate that's reportedly 'rocking the nation':

"Palin, Aug. 7: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care."

Let's take all the crazy and bait out of it, and we end up with the notion that in a government-sponsored plan, beneficiaries would received varying levels of health care (or rather, health care reimbursement), depending on their level of productivity in society.
A position infamously thus put by some dumb, dumb, wow-dumb pundits: "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

So.... why, exactly? What made them think that? Since I'm spending the summer in France I'm not at the heart of the debate, which is a-OK with my sanity, but I can't find any kind of thought process that would go from the proposed plan to someone deciding socialized medecine decides who lives or dies based on their 'societal worth'.
It sounds to me like the ultimate intellectual reach-around, considering that in the private insurance system, companies basically decide what coverage - and thus what level of care - their employees get depending on their worth, i.e their perceived productivity. Except you have to add a layer here where your 'account manager' or whatever their title is, gets to decide in the Insurer's name, how to interpret that contract based on your worth to the insurer (preexisting conditions, etc)

Shouldn't the Fear Factor from waving 'Socialized Healthcare' banners, be instead that everyone will get the same level of care, no matter their place in society? Hence dropping that level for higher tiers, to some effect?

Maybe I'm missing something.