Big Money to be Made Assisting Suicides

This article was published by National Review online on September 5, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

The New York Times published an unbelievably puffy piece about a new assisted-suicide clinic starting in New York as legalization kicks in, describing it oh, so objectively as “a start-up for better deaths”–complete with Buddhist chanting. Good grief.

But the saccharine story raises an important issue discussed too little in the debate over assisted suicide. Legalization creates acute financial conflicts of interest that have the potential to push suicidal people toward death.

For socialized systems and government funded health care, killing instead of caring for expensive patients can save a lot of money over time, particularly when the terminal-illness limitation is lifted. Indeed, some advocates argue that saving money is a big part of the point. The Canadian media has even celebrated that potential.

For now, however, that macro conflict of interest is muted in the U.S. Medicare does not pay for assisted suicide, nor does the federal portion of Medicaid — thanks to a law signed by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. State Medicaid may pay for it, but currently the numbers don’t add up to that much money. Private insurance companies have been smart enough to stay out of the controversy. Some plans pay the cost of doctor visits but not the price of the prescribed poison.

But legalization also creates acute potential conflicts of interest at the micro level. There is big money to be made for individual doctors in writing lethal prescriptions. For example, a death doctor in New Jersey has assisted more than 200 customers — I refuse to call them patients, since prescribed suicide isn’t a legitimate medical treatment — at up to $8,000 per prescribed overdose. If the average charge was $5,000, that’s more than a million bucks in a short time for not doing a whole lot of doctoring.

The New York assisted-suicide start-up touted so glowingly in the Times is another case in point. The clinic plans to charge up to $12,000 per suicide facilitation. Here’s what twelve grand covers.

Patients get two medical evaluations and a mental health screening, as well as a prescription for the combination of drugs — sedatives, morphine, lethal doses of cardiac medication — that will kill them.

New York is a populous state. So, let’s do a little math. If 1,000 people receive assisted suicide over the next few years from these “clinicians,” at say an average of $10,000 per death, that comes to — holy cow! — $10,000,000! Again, for doing very little actual doctoring. And the assisted-suicide clinic doesn’t have an office, so no rent payments will cut into the cash flow.

Moreover, the assisted-suicide clinic isn’t offering any actual “treatments,” since the price doesn’t cover caring for patients’ illnesses or, apparently, palliating symptoms. Nor will the “clinicians” practice in the medical specialties that treat the various illnesses with which suicide customers will present, such as cancer, ALS, or kidney disease.

Indeed, according to the story, the leader of the clinic is a nurse practitioner who treats chronic pain, which isn’t the same thing at all as caring for terminally ill people. Another M.D. is an ER specialist. They don’t treat terminal illnesses over the long haul, either. A palliative-care doc is involved with the suicide clinic but, according to the story, appears most interested in psychedelics. There is a former “hospice worker” and Buddhist monk. They sure don’t diagnose or treat terminal illnesses.

I’ll also bet the twelve grand doesn’t cover suicide prevention, which I doubt will be offered in any event. At least, there is no mention of that essential hospice service in the story. Besides, if the good death prescribers find that a patient does not qualify for a prescribed poisonous overdose, one would assume they don’t get the $12,000, a clear potential conflict of interest in my book.

Assisted-suicide proponents always argue that it will be implemented by doctors who have long-term relationships with their patients. That has always been a crock since most M.D.s properly will have nothing to do with prescribing suicides.

This story proves that point yet again. These suicide facilitators may know their customers for only about the two weeks it takes to jump through the bureaucratic hurdles. They certainly won’t have a long-term doctor-patient relationships with them.

With assisted-suicide numbers increasing every year and more states pushed to legalize doctor-prescribed death, there is big money to be made by doctors from writing lethal prescriptions. The subjects of this story do not appear to be motivated by avarice. But do we really want to financially incentivize access to suicide and let doctors get rich providing it?

That would sure allow bad practitioners who fail in clinical practice to personally do well by doing bad. Which reminds me of a joke. What do you call a medical student who graduates last in his class? “Doctor."