Fact Check: Bill Gates did not speak about a death panel during G20 Summit

New Delhi, Nov 21: Is a death panel needed for sick people to cut high medical costs. A post has gone viral on the social media following the G20 Summit held in Bali, Indonesia recently claiming that Microsoft founder Bill Gates had sought for such a death panel.

The postcard features a picture of Gates with the following caption, "Bill Gates Tells G20 World Leaders That 'Death Panels' Will Soon Be Required."

"Unelected world health czar Bill Gates has used his appearance at the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, to raise a discussion about 'death panels'. According to Gates, death panels will be necessary in the near future in order to end the lives of sick and unwell people due to 'very, very high medical costs'," the post also reads.

Further there is a video that makes the same claim and Gates can be heard saying, "he said something very alarming last evening at the G20 summit." Following that, Gates can be heard saying: "Because of very, very high medical costs and a lack of willingness to say, 'is spending a million dollars on that last three months of life for that patient, would it be better not to lay off those ten teachers and to make that trade-off in medical costs?'"
"But that's called the death panel, and you are not supposed to have that discussion," Gates also explained.

OneIndia has learnt that the claim is wrong and no such statement was made during the G20 Summit. In the video the logo Forata.tv is clearly visible. After we did a search we found the video posted on YouTube.

The video was posted in September 2010 and this makes it clear that it has nothing do with the recent G20 Summit. We also found that nowhere Gates had spoken about the need for a death panel. He only discussed how the US had spent 17 per cent of its GDP on healthcar, making roads stressful for other sectors for education.

Hence it is right to conclude that the death panel argument has been taken out of context and claims being shared about Gates saying the same are unrelated.