Doctors Are Stupid

Seriously stupid.

This is what I mean: When I go into a doctor's or dentist's office, the staffie behind the desk almost invariably hands me three or four pages of forms to fill out. The information is the same: (name, date of birth, residence, etc., etc.) When I ask "don't you have this on file", I invariably get some lame-ass excuse that "we have to re-verify everything" or some crap like that.

Contrast that, if you will, to when I take my car into the local dealership for a major maintenance check. I call and make the appointment, they verify that it's the same car that I had the last time. When I get there, they have a work order printed out with name, address, telephone numbers, car data, etc. If I haven't moved or changed jobs, the only thing they have to fill in is the mileage. Everything else is pre-printed.

So, you might ask, why is an auto maintenance shop far more efficient for paperwork than a doctor's office?

Hell if I know. Maybe we ought to, as part of the health care "reform"[1], make all doctors go work for six months in an automobile repair shop.

(So what I do is sit down, ignore the "please print" instructions and scrawl, in my quasi-legible handwriting, into the blocks. Where nothing has changed, that's what I write. I have never had any of the staffies question me on this.)

[1]"Reform" being defined as "kowtowing to the senators who (i) have been bribed received large donations from the health insurance lobbyists; or (ii) are part of the party which overwhelmingly lost the last election."