By Dr. Tyler Scott, WCI Columnist
The moment when everything changed.
“Dr. Scott, I can’t get the handpiece positioned correctly to refine this distal-lingual chamfer on #3 for Gladys. Can you help me?”
It was just another Tuesday teaching at the dental school. SRPs in two chairs; a three-ring circus of a pedo exam in another; two no-shows; and a crown prep for Gladys who, at 74, had finally lost the battle of biting into Jolly Ranchers daily and had fractured the functional cusp off of her upper right molar.
“Yeah, I’ll be right over,” I said.
I put down my laptop where I had been taking what felt like the 387th mandatory HIPPA training of my life, grabbed my loupes, and headed over to help an enthusiastic albeit overwhelmed junior dental student doing her first crown ever on a live patient.
“Oh, that’s why you can’t see anything,” I said. “You need to have the patient completely supine to get back there, and you can’t be sitting at 9 o’clock. It’s impossible to see if you have her up at 30 degrees and you have to move over to the 11 o’clock position.”
I laid the patient back, swung around to the top of the chair, and showed the sweaty student how to position herself and fulcrum correctly to easily see and refine the area in question.
“Do you want to do it, or do you want me to touch it up for you?” I asked (we were almost three hours into the appointment. There is a reason dental school fees are lower than private practice fees.).
“You do it,” said Gladys and the student simultaneously.
I reached over to grab a new 856-016 bur, and as I turned back to position myself again, I leaned forward just slightly and . . . BAM!!! I winced violently as I felt an intense stabbing pain in my lower back. It felt like someone hit a screwdriver with a croquet mallet from my lumber spine toward my left hip. I flinched so obviously that the only other thing I could hear above the screaming pain was the sound of my own embarrassment. I was mortified. I was sure the patient saw me recoil and grimace, but alas, Gladys had her eyes closed.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to rob you of the educational opportunity we have here,” I said. “You’ve done great so far; this will only take a minute or two to finish up.”
What the heck was THAT?!?
The Diagnosis, Part 1
Like any dentist, my neck and back had bothered me at times in my career. I had made an inconsistent yet genuine effort to practice good ergonomics, to stretch during the day, and to take care of myself during the week. I had even been getting twice-monthly massages and going to the gym with the purpose of strengthening my core.
But this was no achy back. Something felt wrong, really wrong.
After a trip to my PCP and some functional testing later, a differential diagnosis started to form. Ankylosing spondylitis, piriformis syndrome, and disc prolapse were some initial suspects. Blood work was done that day to check for a specific gene associated with ankylosing spondylitis, an MRI was ordered for a few weeks later to look at the soft tissue, and I was referred to physical therapy to start working on stretching and strengthening the supportive postural muscles in my lower back.
I hoped that I would be getting a definitive diagnosis soon which would lead to a successful treatment plan, but I left there feeling a bit nervous when my doctor asked, “Dentistry, huh? This doesn’t always end well for you guys. Do you have a disability policy?”
More information here:
People Aren’t Buying Disability Insurance, But They Should
The Backstory
Fortunately, I had been reading The White Coat Investor long enough to know I needed a true own-occupation long-term disability insurance policy. Shortly after graduating from dental school, I got a policy in place with all the qualities Dr. Jim Dahle has taught me to look for: non-cancelable; guaranteed renewable; and riders for partial disability, cost of living adjustment, and future benefit increase option.
The benefit was for 60% of the income the contract from the public health clinic showed I would receive in my first year. I was now the proud owner of a $5,400 per month quality long-term disability policy.
As my income increased in the coming years, I would send in my W-2 and increase my coverage accordingly. However, that also increased the premium. Once I got to $7,000 per month of coverage and the premium was $2,500 per year (up from ~$1,800 originally), that check got increasingly painful to write. We had three little kids and a modest public health income, and that $2,500 was a HUGE amount of money for us. And for what? I was young, healthy, and spry—not some fragile old man. I told myself I was done increasing my benefit and paying the profit-mongering insurance scum more and more of my money each year. I stopped increasing my benefit.
Fast forward seven years later, and I was suddenly wondering if I was going to have to file a claim.
The Process
I was unsettled. I didn’t know what I should do next, and just like the other moments of uncertainty in my financial life, I turned to WCI. I ended up reading two very helpful posts that had an incredibly positive impact on the end of this story:
One takeaway from these two guest posts, both written by disability attorneys, was to talk to a lawyer early in the process if you think you may need to file a claim. My first thought was that it was a fairly self-serving bit of advice, but I followed it and I’m so glad I did.
I reached out to the offices of both authors of the posts. I first spoke with Evan Schwartz who was incredibly helpful and generous with his time during the free initial consultation. I had previously emailed him my policy and medical records, and he told me that I had a strong case but that I had a potential problem that needed decisive action.
A few months before this, I had been offered a job as a financial planner. I had already started the process of onboarding for this job, which I had originally intended to be a part-time monetized hobby and a possible pathway to a more substantial step back from dentistry. I had even taken on one client as a trial run and had been paid on a 1099 for that work. I had passed the trial phase, and I was about to be added to the payroll of the finance firm as a W-2 part-time employee in only a few weeks.
I fully intended to stay employed by the dental school and to ask to transition to a non-clinical teaching role while I went through my treatment plan.
Evan told me that if I got added to the financial firm’s payroll or if I transitioned to a didactic position within the school before I had clearly “established a date of disability,” the insurance company would argue that my “own occupation” was that of a financial planner and/or lecturer and that my claim would be at serious risk because I was fully able to work in those jobs—even with my back injury.
If I wanted to strengthen my chances of success, I needed something more definitive in my medical records showing that I could not practice clinical dentistry. He told me I needed to get that MRI as soon as possible and definitely before I transitioned roles in the school or signed on as a financial planner. He also told me to be clear and honest with anyone I interacted with who may be writing a note in my chart that I was a dentist, that I couldn’t work, and that I may be filing a disability claim.
He offered to take my case and his firm would take the lead on the rest of the process. The price was a $5,000 retainer. I said I would think about it, but first, I wanted to use my immediate bandwidth to get my medical records shored up.
More information here:
Leaving Dentistry and Finding Happiness
The Diagnosis, Part 2
On Evan’s advice, I immediately called the imaging center and begged to have my appointment moved up. I got in a few days later and then back into my PCP a day after that to review the results.
It was bad, much worse than either of us thought.
A series of bulging discs pushing on my spinal cord; arthritis in my back joints; and, most problematic of all, a severe narrowing of the canals that my spinal nerves run through. There is no consensus why this all happened; the various doctors suppose it was some combination of genetics, dentistry, and bad luck. Regardless of why it happened, I felt old, broken, worried, and validated. I wondered if I was just being overreactive and whiny and if I was just suffering from “man flu of the back.” But at least now I knew I had real structural problems.
For those interested, the radiology report read this way:
- L1/L2 Mild facet arthrosis.
- L2/L3 Mild facet arthrosis.
- L3/L4 Moderate facet arthrosis. Moderate disc bulge with annualar fissure. Mild flattening of the thecal sac. Mild neural foramen narrowing.
- L4/L5 Severe facet arthrosis. Moderate midline protrusion with annualar fissure. Moderate central spinal canal stenosis. Moderate lateral recess and neural foramen narrowing.
- L5/S1 Large-sized disc bulge asymmetric left. Severe lateral recess narrowing. Severe left and moderate right neural foramen narrowing. Modic type I discogenic edema along the endplates asymmetric left.
In the days between the horrifying moment at the dental school and reviewing the MRI findings with my doctor, I hadn’t slept through the night. Partly because I was terrified about what was happening and mostly because these sudden pains would wake me up every hour or two. I could go about my life just fine most of the time, but once or twice an hour, a subtle bend to pick up a fork or a mild twist to buckle my seatbelt would send the screwdriver back through my back/butt/hip complex. It was seemingly random. It was a game of lumbago Russian roulette just to tie my shoes or dry myself off.
It had kept happening at work, but I had taken care not to hold anything other than a mirror in a patient’s mouth and deflected anything potentially dangerous to other faculty. I had to “run to the bathroom” a lot those couple of weeks.
After talking to my doctor about the next steps in my treatment plan, she said, “Let’s talk about work. You obviously can’t do dentistry right now. It’s not reasonable from a pain perspective and it’s not ethical from a patient care perspective.”
I was disabled from my occupation.
More information here:
A Dental Career Reimagined – I Thought I’d Be Rich But I Found Wealth in Another Way
The Results
Evan helped me dodge a major problem. I now had definitive imaging and chart notes to support the reality that I could not be running a drill in anyone’s mouth for the time being and, critically, I had not yet transitioned to any other types of work. My “own occupation” on the date of the MRI and the chart notes was that of a clinical dentist.
I felt so grateful to him and was ready to call him back and pay the $5,000 retainer. But . . . remember how I stopped increasing my benefit seven years ago because I couldn’t swallow paying the increasing premium? Well, that $7,000 benefit no longer represented 60% of my income; it was more like 40%. After years of pay raises and negotiating higher-than-average academic salaries, I was facing the reality of taking a major pay cut to be a didactic lecturer or a flat-fee financial planner. We had recently bought a house in the massively overpriced Salt Lake City market, and we were not in a position to be writing $5,000 checks without thoughtful consideration. We were about to be in a tough financial spot, even if my claim was approved.
That’s when I called Ben Glass, the author of the other post I had read on the blog. For $600, Ben would review my policy and my medical records, and he would provide a one-hour consultation about how to most optimally file my claim. He wouldn’t do it for me like Evan would—I’d have to do it all myself—but he would advise me beforehand.
This was definitely worth the money.
Ben told me that, based on the language in my policy and the clarity in my medical records, my claim was strong. He advised me to lean less on the “it hurts so bad to do dentistry” part of the story and more heavily on the “this is not safe for my patients, and I could really hurt someone” part of the story. The combination of clear medical records with the possibility of patient harm meant that I didn’t need to convince anyone of my pain experience, a subjective finding that anyone who works in medicine knows is difficult to quantify.
I wrote up my narrative to the insurance company with his advice in mind, sent it back to his office for revision, and filed my claim with cautious optimism.
The insurance company was very kind in the days that followed, and at the same time, it became very clear to me that its business model is to take in premiums and do anything possible to not pay out benefits. There were scores of phone calls, emails, paperwork, return trips to the doctor, interviews, and assertions that I was not a dentist but rather a financial planner because I had one paltry 1099 check from a month before my MRI. Then, over four months later . . . my claim was approved. I was told I would start receiving $7,000 every month per my total disability as a clinical dentist.
My disability tale, while still tragic, had a happier ending than it otherwise could have.
The Epilogue
Thanks to Evan, I established a date of disability prior to starting as a financial planner, so my financial planning income has not and will not reduce my benefit. I am loving my life now working from home and helping my fellow healthcare providers find peace of mind through comprehensive flat-fee planning.
My back still hurts—a lot. Not as much as it did before, but despite several procedures and many months of physical therapy, there has not been much improvement. The thing that seems to help the most is not doing dentistry. I still twitch violently at work, but now it’s only an Excel formula that gets damaged and not the sublingual tissue of someone I’ve sworn not to harm.
My policy pays out until I am 65, but there is no guarantee that will happen. I will need a physician to recertify my disability each year based on whatever findings are present at the time.
I also have a long-term disability policy provided by the dental school through The Hartford. Despite filing a claim more than eight months ago, I haven't heard anything. Working with that insurance company has been an absolute nightmare. It said that my claim is unlikely to get paid because I was working in one sedentary occupation and moved to another sedentary occupation, so there is no merit to my claim of disability. As if doing a root canal in a 0.2 mm hole bent over for two hours is the same as talking to someone on Zoom about how to execute on their Mega Backdoor Roth. Also, any benefit I get from that policy will be taxable (this is the case with most employer-provided plans), and it would only pay out for two years.
I still have not technically ended my employment with the dental school. I am hopeful that if a future treatment is successful, I can return one day in some capacity and stay connected to this part of my life in a smaller way.
The Takeaways
- If you think there is any possibility you may need to file a claim, talk to a lawyer sooner rather than later. If I end up getting $7,000 a month until I’m 65, talking to those attorneys was worth $2.184 million (tax-free).
- Don’t start ANY other work before your claim is made. The insurance companies are paid to not pay you. If there is any income that is not coming from practicing medicine, they will attempt to deny your claim or reduce your payout citing your other occupations.
- Don’t get cheap with your long-term disability coverage. The premiums on these policies are massive and very painful to pay. But they are expensive because there are a lot of claims made. One in seven doctors will make a claim during their career. I never thought I’d be one. If I had increased my benefit through the years, my payment would be $10,500 per month. My unwillingness to increase my benefit may end up costing me $1.092 million tax-free over the next 26 years.
- Don’t rely on employer-provided plans. They often have a more unfavorable definition of disability. The benefits are usually taxable, and they often aren’t portable. Plus, at least in my case, they have been indescribably awful to work with compared to my personal policy.
- Be clear with those writing your chart notes. As I was telling my PCP, my physical therapists, and the anesthesiologists doing most of my pain procedures what was going on in my life as it relates to dentistry and my disability claim, I almost always was told, “Oh that’s good to know, I’ll make sure to be extra clear in the chart about what we see here.” I think that helped; it certainly didn’t hurt.
- Think twice before getting a crown at the dental school.
- HIPPA training has painful outcomes.
- If you love your dentist, dental hygienist, or their assistants, buy them a massage.
Have more questions about insurance and what kind of policies would be the best for you? Hire a WCI-vetted professional to help you sort it out.
If you've had to claim a disability, was your experience similar to mine? What obstacles did you face? Were you ultimately successful? Would you do anything different? Comment below!
I recently started re-reading White Coat. Your info has always been fine but I admit this infomercial
article surely illustrates what folks must be objecting to. As you stated in your rebuttal, it is a business and you can do as you please but as an enjoyable site goes, you have, indeed, run it into the ground, harmed your credibility and reduced it to click-bait still worthy of a quick skim and, perhaps occasionally a little more–though even then, it will be hard to trust the contents. Good luck.
I’ve objected to some of the new articles but I don’t think clickbait describes this article at all.
This is a well written post and the perspective of someone who’s had to actually file for disability is extremely valuable to a site like this.
Dr Scott’s articles continue to be top notch.
I think this comment may refer to the previous blogpost What IS the WCI Message Anyway?
Thanks for reading Mitchboy. If your comment is indeed intended for my article I am interested in, and would be grateful for, a more robust explanation on what elements of my story and writing present as an infomercial and/or click-bait.
My goal in writing here is to make a positive impact in our community of financial astute medical professionals. My strategy to create that impact is be vulnerable and honest about my personal experiences, and to connect those experiences to financial principals that are relatable to others.
If I am not having that impact for you, I’d like to do better, and would appreciate more detailed constructive feedback.
Thanks again for taking the time to read.
Time is short but the ads in the article, your reference, backscratching other authors and a headline that is tantalizing but not fully clear, coupled with my doubts that the 1/7 number clarifies how much disability claim is substance abuse, mental health or self-destruction, things many of us feel no need to insure against–was this mentioned? It is ENORMOUS, by the way.
Sorry no time to write well. Trying to shed light on how if this was a journal article the bias would be laughable and exempt the article from consideration–too many things to have to wonder about…WCI reasonably SHOULD enjoy similar scrutiny as price for taking it down this Ramsey-path. Not evil nor un-American, just reader-beware.
“Sorry no time to write well” is without a doubt the most delightful piece of editorial context I could ever hope to see in a critique of my work. Thank you for that.
Truly, thank you for the feedback and noting the enormity of my contributions, your generosity is similarly noted and appreciated. I will give your words the appropriate level of weight as I continue my writing here.
Mitch boy must work for The Hartford.
We DEFINITELY do not hold ourselves to the standard of a peer reviewed journal. Although there is a bit of a “peer review process,” it just happens after publication in the comments section! Thanks for serving on that committee.
I do not understand the complaint.
The author describes their experience, value of using an attorney, risks of starting the process alone… All useful information.
If the objection is to the reference to prior posts by authors who were advertising their services, well this site does not do objective reviews os service providers. I do not know of any site that does this for lawyers. Maybe Martindale Hubble but very broad and vague ratings.
As for whether one should buy disability insurance- I assume those who go out on disability are glad they have it. I do not know of data on the proportion of docs who go on disability do so for mental as opposed to physical health causes. It would be interesting to know. If you have references, please share them. Without data, I am not prepared to accept the implication that mental health represents a large share. I also do not see why it matters. If you cannot work, then you are out the income, regardless of the reason.
As for which lawyer to call, I assume I would look for someone in my area, certainly in my state, who specializes in this field. I doubt a national website would help me find such a person.
I find it hard to resent the fact that people buy ads on articles in their fields.
Odd comment to put on a columnist’s post. Infomercial because we have disability insurance agents as advertisers?
Hey Tyler, I’m also interested in some side gig financial planning and would like to inquire about potential opportunities. Please let me know how we could touch base. Thanks!
Hey Tyler!
Great post. Now that you are receiving benefits do you have to fill out monthly updates? Have you had to do many IME? Have you been monitored by and investigator?
I’m curious what the process looks like post receiving benefits and warding off the perpetual concerns of the insurance company wrongfully not paying benefits.
So far my experience with my personal policy carrier has been very positive. They have called a few times to ask about what is next in my treatment plan and to request any additional medical records from the past few months, but overall I haven’t got the feeling they are looking for a way out of paying benefits.
I remain hopeful my employer policy will also come through and agree to pay benefits but it’s been interesting to see how different the two insurance companies operate. Both have been understandably thorough in completing their due diligence but one was able to arrive at a decision with a couple of months, the other keeps telling me my claim is going to a different department or committee “for review”.
One of the rationales for having a 3-6 month emergency fund is that most long-term disability policies have a 90 day waiting period before they start to pay BUT, that’s assuming your insurance company can and will actually get through their bureaucratic process in ~90 days and starting paying you. My story illustrates that isn’t always the case, and having an extra layer of contingency planning in place may be prudent should one be out of work awaiting their benefits.
dude Tyler awesome post i’m so sorry you had to go through this but great that you were financially literate and got proper true own occ disability insurance before this happened. question man did your insurance agent who sold you the policy help you out in any capacity? did you reach out to him/her and was their any advice given?
And wtf did you do to your back!!! was that just all dentistry? were you powerlifting as a hobby? good lord!
Rikki, thanks for reading and for the support.
I did not reach out to the agent who sold me the policy. In hindsight, I wish I had, I’m sure his experience and perspective would have been valuable.
I wish I knew how my back ended up this way. I have wondered if my time at the gym played a role. Ironically, my primary intention for starting to lift and build strength several years ago was to reduce my risk of dental related injury.
Actually, millions of people have backs like that.
Nothing special. No need to posit unusual injuries or lifestyles. Backs are badly designed and wear out long before we are finished with them.
Weightlifters have lower than average back pain. There was a study of Finnish Olympic athletes. They compared the skinny runners to the big weightlifters, who bent over and picked up bars much heavier than their body weights. Followed both groups during and long after their Olympic careers. The runners had more pain, more surgery and more time in hospital.
No one knows why some people get pain and some don’t. Some people with backs like that are in misery. Some are asymptomatic. No one knows why.
Thank you for this thoughtful and helpful post. I’m surprised at the criticism. My disability policy has a 90 day elimination period. You mention it took 4 months for your claim to get approved. Did they give 1 month backpay? It seems wrong for them not to pay past the elimination period, which is written into the policy. I have a side business investing in real estate, but this could hardly be considered my primary profession/ “own occupation” compared to my physician duties and hours worked. I think it even specifically mentions work in medicine jn my policy. Despite this, could the insurance company use a successful real estate investing business as an excuse not to pay out?
My policy had a 90 day elimination period so, yes, I did get one month’s “backpay” for that extra month it took them to make a decision on my claim. However, I learned most disability policies pay one month in arrears. So practically speaking, even with a 90 day elimination period, you won’t see any money until day 120 at the earliest. I think this should impact how people plan for their emergency funds.
Regarding your real estate business – Now that I do financial planning as my primary job I review a lot of physician specific long term disability policies. I see a wide variation in the definition of “own occupation”. Some policies are very specific and refer to the insured’s specialty (i.e. vascular surgery), while some say your occupation is defined as “any and all occupations you are preforming at the time of your disability”.
Mine was closer to the latter – it did not mention dentistry at all and that’s why there was a great deal of hand wringing about my $1200 of 1099 income as a financial planner. It’s important to understand the exact terminology and language in your policy before taking on additional “occupations”.
The insurance companies are NOT on your side. They will do anything and everything to reduce or deny your claim.
I worried about that a lot and it’s (an admittedly small) part of the reason I dropped my DI policy a few years ago. Even if I couldn’t practice medicine my income wouldn’t drop much. You’re right to be concerned. I think there is a very real risk there.
Dr. Scott,
I know from your previous post that you’re disillusioned with dentistry. In one you suggested you were peer-pressured into the profession. I’ve heard of others having similar out-of-nowhere injuries, but there are also dentists practicing into their 70s and 80s by choice. Also, it’s easy to knock those things we feel we’ve moved beyond, like exes. But don’t warn against or disparage getting a crown at a dental school. The patients are the reason we are here. No matter how many plastic teeth a student prepares (or codes run on a mannequin for the EM folks), without living patients, it isn’t dentistry (or medicine). The three hour crown preparation is an ordeal. And I hear from patients who have experienced 2-3 hours-long root canal therapy from EXPERIENCED dentists. I applaud those who take the time to do things well and conscientiously. Hurried procedures not done to standard are the real embarrassment to dentistry, and any other field that claims to be a profession.
First, pulp assassin is an amazing moniker, especially if you are an endodontist.
Second, the quip at the end about the dental school is intended to be light and humorous. No disparagement intended. I appreciate knowing it didn’t land that way for you. Humor is difficult to communicate in writing without the vocal tones and body language available to the spoken word, I will consider that more carefully in the future.
Also, it was my observation that, despite our best efforts to be honest and transparent about the tempo of moving through a treatment plan at the dental school, that most patients didn’t truly grasp what they were signing up for.
I made it a part of the new patient exams I supervised to ask the patients expressly, “what prompted you to choose to receive your care here with us”?
90% of the time, the answer was “it’s cheaper”. Cost savings is a completely reasonable motivation to receive care in a training facility. Notably, I never once had anyone answer, “I feel excited about aiding the next generation of dental professionals develop their skillset. I’m happy to come as often as necessary and stay as long as is needed for them to achieve competence.”
Some patients may have those benevolent motivations, and bless them for that. For those who don’t have these magnanimous intentions, I think there is an ethical responsibility to inform patients about what the process often looks like in the context of their goal to save money. When a patient is driving in an hour or more each way, taking off work to get there, spending 2 hours for an exam, 2 hours per quad of SRP, 3 hours for a build up, 3 hours for a crown prep, and two hours for a crown delivery…all at separate appointments, it may very well cost them more money than going to a general dentist in their neighborhood who can complete this process at the same high level in a much more efficient timeline.
I agree that quality is paramount. You won’t find any accounts of me advocating for faster procedures from trainees or licensed professionals. The procedure takes the times it takes to provide the highest level of care possible.
I am so proud of my time at the dental school and all the students and patients we helped everyday. I am tremendously grateful for the patients who sat through 3 hour prophys and 9 appointments to make an RPD so that I could become a dentist. We absolutely couldn’t do it without them.
I had my first crown done at a dental school 20+ years ago. In the process of having it redone now. But 20 years isn’t too bad.
It’s pretty clear you wanted to leave dentistry by committing insurance fraud. It’s people like you who make insurance premiums high for the rest of us. This is just shameless self-promotion and a sick way of trying to assuage your guilt.
If you didn’t want to be a dentist, you shouldn’t have gone to dental school. Basically you benefitted from affirmative action programs and public subsidies- then decided you couldn’t handle it. It’s time for our government to step in and regulate the heck out of medical school admissions, allowing only truly the best and brightest to become doctors. The Asians who sued Harvard give hope for tomorrow.
Bro, the way you make money as a financial advisor is AUM, not this bottom of the barrel fee based advising. Top advisors have access to alternative investments and obscure asset classes that can generate higher return with less risk. Even this website is pumping RE pretty hard. (Have fun with interest rates rising higher and faster than ever before in human history.) The working wealthy may benefit from index funds, but real generational wealth doesn’t come from them. Is being tech support for some small fish’s $30k mega back door Roth really what you want to do with your life?
If I was switching careers, I would start a service to help underwater short term rental investors get out of their negative cash flowing properties.
Finally- what happened to this website? It’s gone downhill over the last two years.
In the words of one of my favorite insurance-fraud-committing, sick-guilt-assuaging, shameless-self promoting, unregulated-government-subsided, bottom-of-the-barrel-fee-based-advising, small-fish-tech supporting, bros of all time:
“The comments sections of the internet are a dark and tangled briar full of noxious opinionated thorns and cutting literary barbs. Linguistically skilled, albeit myopic, trolls lurk there, waiting to overstate an author’s tertiary point or gaslight fellow commenters in the stench of their own poorly digested rhetoric and politically infused flatulence.”
Finally – what ever happened to human decency? It’s really gone downhill the last few years.
Well, I don’t know about the “linguistically skilled” part.
But it is easy to hurl accusations with no attempt to back them up.
I realized I failed to answer your question in my previous reply. It is my goal and intention to answer each question asked of me.
Is being tech support for some small fish’s $30k mega back door Roth really what you want to do with your life?
Yes, very much so. And ski, I want to ski.
When I am done providing a thoughtful, organized, and intentional financial plan for a physician, a parent, and/or peer, I feel genuine happiness. I can see in their eyes the relief and peace of mind that comes from knowing it’s all going to be ok. That their hard work and sacrifice for their families and their patients is going to amount to something joyful.. It’s incredibly satisfying to use my experience and knowledge to improve the lives of people in my community.
Helping medical professionals is particularly meaningful because I know by my own experience how having a solid financial plan can improve patient care. When doctors feel financially stable, even financially abundant, burnout is lower and they way they show up for their patients improves. This has an indirect but real impact in our society.
I’m grateful and honored to do the work I do.
I truly hope you find the same meaning and satisfaction in your work.
[Ad hominem attack deleted and poster IP address blocked.]
Lots of trolls posting on this article. Having seen Tyler at WCICON and having read all of his columns, I believe he is genuine and full of integrity. His articles are interesting, well-written, and offer a glimpse of a path less traveled. Keep up the great work!
Thank you for reading, your support, and your kind words. All are greatly appreciated.
Just wanted to chime in and say, as a fellow dentist, I appreciate this article- good to know the process “just in case.” Never thought it was insurance fraud(?!?!)
Tyler,
I’m baffled why several people found your article controversial. I found your article well written, informative and humorous. Thank you for sharing your story and I’m sorry for your tragic health issue. (Periodontist here).
Thanks for sharing your story. I too sustained a serious back injury at work. Luckily I didn’t have to file a disability claim but I couldn’t work for a couple of months and had pain daily for 9 months. Prior to that I had had back pain on and off for almost a decade. That was 5 years ago now and I’ve essentially been pain free. I am able to exercise and live a totally normal life. Check out the work of Stuart McGill https://www.backfitpro.com/. I got help for my long-term back issues through one of the people he trained who works in St Louis. It’s not a magical fix, just high-quality, research-based physical therapy. Best thing I ever did for my health!
I didn’t find this piece controversial per se, but was puzzled only by one thing: after a sudden back injury (commonly would be from a herniated or bulging disc), why would you immediately opt for a lawyer and pursue DI policy? I.e. rather than the typical route – NSAIDs, quick MRI, injection from your local back pain physiatrist, and PT, before trying to go back to working?
This is a good observation and a fair question.
Two things led me towards thinking about a claim on my disability policy fairly quickly in my process:
1. It was clear that after reviewing the radiology findings that I would be out of dentistry indefinitely. Indefinitely could be a month, it could be forever. While I was (and still am) hopeful that a treatment plan of injections, PT, and surgery will allow me to practice again in some capacity (even volunteer work would be great), knowing that I wasn’t going to be working for at least a month or two made me think there was no downside to getting this bureaucratic process started. If I filed a claim and got back to practicing before the claim paid out, I was only out a few hours of my time and $600 to the lawyer. In contrast, if the treatment plan was not effective, as is often the case with back pain, I knew I would be glad that I had got the process started. As I said, it’s been nearly a year and my employer provided policy still hasn’t made a decision on my claim. The elimination period on most policies is 90 days but that does not mean the insurance company will have reached a conclusion during that timeframe. There is little downside to starting early.
2. After talking to the first lawyer it became clear that I needed to “establish a clear date of disability” prior to starting my financial planning side hustle. I wanted to get into financial planning anyway and being indefinitely out of dental work made it pragmatic from both an availability perspective and a “we need to pay the bills” perspective to start doing financial planning pretty quickly. Getting the claim going early helped make it clear which occupation I was doing on which dates so the waters were not muddied when it came to deciding what my “own occupation” was for which I was claiming disability under the policy.