The Assisted Death Clinic That Has Helped Ten New Yorkers To End Their Lives

Quietus Management bills itself as a “care coordination service.” In reality, it is New York’s first clinic for assisted dying. Of the so far at least 20 people who have been assisted to die in New York since the practice was legalized in August, the clinic has now disclosed that it has helped 10. While it charges $12,000 for its services and federal law bars insurers from paying for most costs related to assisted dying, Quietus says it has handled some cases some for free and some for $50.The clinic’s doctors prescribe a cocktail of five drugs, which are mixed into a small portion of apple juice and given to the patient in their own home. “The amounts of these medications that are being used in this cocktail are like 100 times what would normally be a therapeutic dose,” co-founder of Quietus, David Atkins, said in a recent interview. “The idea is that a patient is usually unconscious within a few minutes, and they die within a couple hours, a very, very peaceful death, done in a dignified manner, without suffering.”But disability and elderly rights campaigners disagree with that assessment and say that the opening of Quietus and the introduction of the Medical Aid in Dying Act is a bad omen for vulnerable people in New York.“I’m concerned that insurance companies are going to start writing algorithms and playing the game of ‘how much care can we deny before this person becomes eligible’ — pushing a prescription that will kill them instead of extending their life,” a case manager at a South Bronx independent living organization, Jose Hernandez, tells the Sun.“You’re looking at $100,000 or more for life-saving cancer treatment and assisted-suicide drugs cost between $5 and $100. The state should not be in the business of ending lives — or minimizing the value of a life — when there are options to ease suffering during the transition instead.” Others argue the concern is not only what assisted dying costs New York, but what it could open up nationwide.“Quietus is a danger to New York, and I believe they are a danger in setting a precedent in America that Americans will wish they never allowed to happen in the first place,” a Canadian military veteran and anti-MAiD activist, Kelsi Sheren, tells the Sun. “The danger of having these for-profit companies is the incentive. It’s money, and you can convince enough people to do really bad things for money.”Ms. Sheren says that doctors in Canada bill the government $800 to $1,200 per patient. She argues that nonprofits running dedicated assisted-death facilities must keep raising money to stay open, so a nonprofit begins to function like a business.“We may not have for-profit companies, but we have for-profit doctors, and to me, that’s almost just as bad because there’s no regulatory body really outside of our government,” Neither Medicaid nor Medicare cover the cost of the lethal drugs at Quietus and the provider says only some private plans may.The cost aside, Mr. Atkins, a licensed social worker with a background in hospice care who spent 17 years as a Buddhist monk in South Korea, believes that New York should allow nurse practitioners to prescribe lethal drugs.“Nurse practitioners and (physicians assistants) right now have the ability to prescribe medications independent of a physician, but the way New York’s state law is written now only physicians can certify and prescribe for medical aid in dying,” he said. “I would love to see a future version of the law expanded to allow nurse practitioners to step into that role as well, as they do in New Mexico and other states. I think that’s a major thing that would really benefit many people because it would expand access.”The American Medical Association’s code calls physician-assisted suicide incompatible with a doctor’s role as healer, but Quietus rejects that charge.“The Hippocratic oath says do no harm. And I don’t think we’re harming anyone by doing this. I think we’re actually being compassionate and relieving suffering,” a palliative care physician with Quietus, Dr. Tara Shapiro, told the New York Times. Quietus is not the only organization that stands to gain from the new end of life industry. Physicians and psychologists it connects patients with bill separately and pharmacies are paid to fill the prescriptions.Nonprofits, including Compassion & Choices and End of Life Choices New York, run help lines that steer patients to willing doctors. Donations fund them. Compassion & Choices, the largest, took in $23.3 million in the year ended June 2025, up from $13.4 million in 2019, according to its tax filings.Quietus declined all interview requests and questions from The New York Sun.What Insurers Stand to GainSome disabled residents in New York say the squeeze is already coming through Medicaid, after home care rules tightened last year. “I recently applied and discovered I did not qualify. Had I tried three to four years earlier I would have,” a disability rights activist in Rochester, Anita Cameron, 61, tells the Sun.Ms. Cameron, who has a degenerative condition, says New Yorkers have told her that they are weighing assisted death because of the home care cuts and changes to fiscal intermediaries, the payroll middlemen for home aides. “I have heard folks have already signed up. I am worried how the system will treat them,” she stresses. “It’s not about fair. It’s not about the truth. It’s about money,” a Californian woman whose insurer appeared to encourage her to opt for assisted death, tells the Sun. Diagnosed in 2012 with scleroderma and pulmonary fibrosis, Stephanie Packer Aguayo was told she had three years, and her doctor prescribed an infusion that cost about $5,000 a session.After California’s aid-in-dying law took effect in 2016, the mother of seven in her mid-40s said that her insurer stopped covering it. A representative then told Ms. Packer Aguayo the lethal drugs would cost a co-pay of $1.20.New York’s law bars insurers from raising the option of assisted death unless the patient or the attending physician asks. Assisted death advocates reject the premise that anyone profits.“These laws are not about reducing costs, conserving resources, or deciding whose life has value,” the chief legal advocacy officer at Compassion & Choices, Bernadette Nunley, tells the Sun.Her group cites research that savings are small, partly because most patients who use the law are already in hospice.Lessons From AbroadFew models elsewhere look like the New York model. Switzerland treats helping someone die for selfish motives, including profit, as a crime, so its providers are nonprofits, charging roughly 10,500 Swiss francs with funeral costs, according to a guide for foreign patients.Canada runs assisted dying through its public health system; however, critics there point to how few clinicians carry the load. In 2023, Health Canada counted about 2,200 practitioners, and 89 of them accounted for roughly a third of cases, according to its annual report. Opponents worry that a business like Quietus is a first step toward something larger and more commercial.Critics on both sides of the border see the same risk: money changing who has a reason to do the work.

The Assisted Death Clinic That Has Helped Ten New Yorkers To End Their Lives

The Assisted Death Clinic That Has Helped Ten New Yorkers To End Their Lives

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