Healing your identity equal to your REC is roughly equivalent to readying your identity and exhausting to do a basic Recover. Readying your identity generally costs 1+card (Ready to Rumble being the canonical example, but also Justice Served, Indomitable, Battle Fury, etc.) Recuperation is a narrower application of readying your identity, at a higher cost.

You could also compare Recuperation to healing cards. First Aid is equally efficient at healing for the many heroes that have a REC of 3, but First Aid is more flexible in that it can also heal allies and other heroes. If you expect to flip to Alter-Ego more than about once, a Crew Quarters will be more efficient at healing.

I would generally suggest not running this unless you're already maxed out on those other, more efficient cards that can do the same job. Maybe in a Hulk or She-Hulk deck, where you can take advantage of their high REC value and HP total, and where you would rather spend your readying effects punching bad guys. Bonus: has a Fist resource to pay for Hulk's cards!