The debate goes on, but this Dish reader may have brought it to an empirical end:
Sorry Andrew, but Mitt and Breitbart are full of shit (big surprise, that) about the 37 pages to change an address. Did you actually read the PDFs, beyond verifying that the document has a total of 38 pages? It took me about 15 seconds to find the instructions for changing current business location. Said instructions point to several sections relevant to whether I'm changing my business address, the address of my billing service, or the address of my record-keeping service.
The change-of-address form is two pages, one of which consists entirely of a single checkbox in which one indicates the states from which most of one's claims arise. The other two (change of biller and change of record location) are one page each. Then there's a signature page. This took me about two minutes to figure out; presumably someone in the health care business who does this for a living would have no trouble at all with this procedure. The remaining pages are instructions and forms for other transactions such as initial enrollment, reporting legal action, and so on. So the total to change one's business address is two pages, including a checkbox that's a full page only because it lists every state. Were one also changing billing service and records management service, two more pages would be needed. Then a final page to sign the thing. I'll be generous and assume I'm doing all three changes together, so call it five pages which by my count is a lot less than 37.
Some further points:
(1) The real question is how this compares to the paperwork involved should a doctor decide to make similar changes with a private insurer. I'm not in the provider side of the medical business, but in my experience as a patient in the private insurance system I sure don't see much evidence of efficiency; for instance, why do I have to fill out the exact same five pages of insurance forms every fucking time I take my kids to the doctor, rather than simply reporting no change since last time? Or worse yet, the paperwork (and uncertainty) involved when taking a sick kid to an out-of-network doctor's visit when on travel. Perhaps a Dish reader in the healthcare business can comment on the view from the provider's side.
(2) Can you think of how to condense a one-page form for change of billing service into less than one page? I can't. Therefore I'm guessing the form for giving similar information to a private insurer is no smaller or simpler to work through.
(3) Mitt highlights this 37-page document as an example of inefficiency, but it's actually exactly the opposite. A number of different changes to a practice's medicare enrollment can be done in one 37-page form, with one unified set of instructions, instead of 8 different 12 page forms for 8 different tasks, with a greater total page count because some common information (basic instructions, forms for current address, business owner information, signature pages, etc) must duplicated, and worse, a greater potential for confusion because 8 different sets of instructions must be kept coordinated and consistent. Not only is one large but multipurpose form simpler for a provider to use, it's less costly for the government to produce and maintain. Mitt's example of government inefficiency is in fact an example of fairly good business practice on the part of government, and if Mitt's business experience involved actual business operations instead of speculation and raiding, he might understand that.
This is brilliant politics on Mitt's part, but it's dishonest as hell.
Which is a pretty good description of his campaign so far.
The Dish 