New Jersey Doctors Make $8,000 Getting Patients to Kill Themselves in Assisted Suicides

The recent NJ.com three-part series on assisted suicide in New Jersey, based on seven-month investigation, raise questions that go far beyond one law, one physician, or one patient’s request. The stories can be read here, here, and here.

As someone who testified repeatedly before the legislature in opposition to this bill and worked with a coalition of disability advocates, independent living centers, medical societies, and physicians seeking to stop it, I have followed this debate closely for years.

Reading this series, I find that some of our warnings have proven accurate and that the law is producing consequences none of us fully anticipated.

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At its core, the debate is about the purpose of medicine and how we, as a society, respond to suffering.

Perhaps the most disturbing detail in the reporting was that at least one physician in New Jersey is charging patients around $8,000 for assistance in ending their lives. The issue is not that physicians are compensated. Doctors, hospitals, hospice providers, and countless others are paid for their services. The issue is what the physician is being paid to do. When ending a human life becomes a billable professional service, medicine has crossed a threshold that should give us all pause.

Even NJ.com’s own presentation of this segment reflects the unease many people feel about this. The second article is headlined, “This NJ Doctor Will Help You Die For a Hefty Price,” with the subheading asking whether she is an “angel of mercy” while also referring to the controversy surrounding her as a “doctor of death.”

The physician herself rejects the term “physician-assisted suicide,” preferring the phrase “medical aid in dying.” But whatever terminology is used, the essential fact remains unchanged: a physician is providing medication intended to bring about death.

The reporting also revealed how quickly assisted suicide has developed into a specialized corner of healthcare. As Susan K. Livio reported in Part Two, “an invisible industry has emerged” in the years since the law passed. The newspaper’s investigation found that medical aid in dying has become a niche specialty, with just eleven physicians and a handful of pharmacies willing to assist dozens of terminally ill patients each year.

One of the most compelling stories in the series involves Katie Kim, shown to be the first person in New Jersey to publicly request medically aid in dying after the 2019 law passed. She initially became an advocate for assisted suicide but later changed her mind. That detail deserves attention. People facing terminal illness often move through periods of fear, uncertainty, depression, acceptance, and renewed hope. Decisions that may seem settled at one point can look very different months later.

Her story is a reminder that the desire for death is not always permanent and that patients who change their minds deserve unwavering support. In fact, NJ.com reported that roughly 30% of patients who receive the medical aid in dying medication opt not to use it, according to a recent study.

Equally troubling was the experience described by Katie Kim and her husband, Freddy Kalles. According to Brianna Kudisch’s reporting, the couple eventually came to feel like “pawns in a chess match.”  After Katie Kim decided not to pursue assisted suicide, Freddy Kalles became increasingly disillusioned with Compassion & Choices, a well-funded national organization that advocates for the legalization and expansion of assisted-suicide laws.

“They used me to get their message across,” Kalles told NJ.com. “They were trying to enroll more of the public to get donations, and so they were using Katie and I to do that.” He further told NJ.com that once the media attention surrounding their story faded, so did the organization’s interest in them. “As soon as the media attention dried up, so did Compassion & Choices’ support and interest in us,” he said.

The Kalles family was not alone in ultimately parting ways with Compassion & Choices. In December 2022, the organization publicly announced a partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association. Just one month later, the Alzheimer’s Association reversed course entirely. It had “failed to do appropriate due diligence,” it stated in a news release cited by NJ.com, adding that Compassion & Choices’ “values are inconsistent with those of the Association.” A spokesman told NJ.com that the organization does not support medical aid in dying as an end-of-life option for people living with dementia, citing palliative care as the appropriate standard. When even a mainstream health organization feels compelled to publicly distance itself, it tells us something important about the direction this movement is heading.

Understanding that direction requires understanding the organization driving it. According to NJ.com, Compassion & Choices has pulled in more than $114 million in revenue between 2019 and 2024. Under its most recent president, the nonprofit nearly doubled its budget to $23 million and its nationwide staff to 115. Its stated goal, according to NJ.com, is to see half of all Americans living in a state where assisted suicide is legal by 2028.

This is not a patient advocacy group operating on goodwill. It is a well-resourced political organization with explicit expansion targets.

A concern too rarely discussed is the impact these policies have on people with disabilities. Our coalition against this bill included the Medical Society of NJ, Not Dead Yet, independent living centers, and many other disability-rights organizations who warned that assisted-suicide laws risk sending a dangerous message. Those warnings are proving well-founded.

NJ.com reported that critics note people in some states have qualified for assisted death with commonly treatable conditions including diabetes, high cholesterol, and Crohn’s disease, and that even individuals with mental health conditions such as eating disorders have been deemed eligible.

This is not a hypothetical concern. It is a documented pattern.

The reporting also revealed that many physicians remain unwilling to participate in assisted death. That reluctance reflects the deeply held belief of many doctors that their profession exists to care for patients through suffering, not to help bring about their deaths.

That is why comments from State senator John Burzichelli, the sponsor of New Jersey’s assisted-suicide law, are so troubling and revealing. When asked about physicians who refuse to participate, Burzichelli told NJ.com: “It is selfish as a physician to impose your limitations on a person’s legal choices to manage their end-of-life decision making.” Many physicians would describe their objections as ethical obligations, not personal preferences.

NJ.com’s reporting also reveals that Burzichelli has discussed reducing the current fifteen-day waiting period to seven days and eliminating the residency requirement. New Jersey is already a sanctuary state for abortion, facilitating the deaths of countless unborn babies. Now, if the residency requirement is lifted, it will become a sanctuary state for assisted suicide as well, a destination for death drawing the terminally ill from across the region to end their lives here.

That would not be without precedent. According to NJ.com, Oregon and Vermont have already repealed their residency provisions following legal challenges brought by Compassion & Choices. Laws introduced with carefully described safeguards rarely remain static. Once assisted suicide becomes accepted as part of healthcare, pressure inevitably shifts toward expanding eligibility, shortening waiting periods, and increasing access.

Taken together, the criticism of physicians who refuse participation and the push to weaken safeguards reveal the direction of this debate: not caution, but expansion. As Jessica Rodgers, a director at the Patient Rights Action Fund, told NJ.com: “Proponents will put together what they say is a very tight piece of legislation that has safeguards, and then they come back and they say, ‘Actually, that safeguard was a barrier, and we have to eliminate it in order for increased access.’”

The lesson from NJ.com’s reporting is not that New Jersey should make assisted suicide easier to obtain. It is that this law has already created troubling consequences.

Vulnerable patients are being misled and exploited by a flawed law. One physician charges $8,000 to end a life while a powerful advocacy organization pulls in millions to expand the practice nationwide. Doctors who refuse to participate are being called selfish by the very lawmakers who wrote the law. And those same lawmakers are discussing fewer safeguards rather than stronger ones. What has emerged is not compassionate end-of-life care. It is an industry and like all industries, it is focused on growth.

Compassion should never mean leaving people to face death alone. It should mean surrounding them with care, presence, and the unwavering affirmation that they matter.

The measure of a compassionate society is not how easily it allows people to die, but how faithfully it accompanies them and seeks to ease their suffering, until they do, naturally.

LifeNews.com Note: Marie Tasy is the executive director of New Jersey Right to Life