My Name Is Rob. And I’m A Recovering Doctor.

Yeah, I am recovering…doing a lot better, actually.  Things are tough, but they are a lot better since I left my destructive relationship with Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance companies.  I’ve had to learn how to manage my own money (now that I can’t count on them to bail me out any more), but things are looking a lot better.  I am beginning to see how much better it will be to be on my own.

The key was when I realized that the system wasn’t going to change no matter how much I accommodated its unreasonable requests.  I felt that if I only did what it asked of me, however unreasonable, it would stop hurting me and, more importantly, my patients.  But I’ve come to see that all the promises to take care of me and my patients were written in sand, and that it couldn’t resist the temptation to cheat on me.  I tried to do what it asked of me, but as time went by I couldn’t take how dirty it made me feel.

I want to believe it was sincere when it told me it wanted to change.  I think at its core, it wants to help patients and doesn’t want to go on those spending binges.  But no matter how sincere the promises sounded, I was always left alone as it threw its money at every sexy treatment, procedure, or drug that walked by. [...]