It does help. Exactly how much is hard to say. Russ' example may be a bit of an outlier since I believe his fueling is higher than stock (he leaves a nice black cloud, but somehow still manages freakish high MPGs, wtf) There's a good CS checklist
here
Greenbook says warm idle 850 -+ 50 rpms, cold start ~200 rpms higher. But I think the common practice is to set CS higher for quicker warm ups/easier cold starting. It also says to give partial throttle when starting, maybe this is similar to a carb'd car, I've never driven one.
I find that mine tends to idle lower than 1200 (where my cold idle is set) for the first few seconds of running. I don't let it sit to get warm, but I do wait until the oil pressure light goes off which can take a few moments. It also starts at the 2nd or 3rd crank. When I had bad (offbrand) GPs in there it took 3 cycles of the GPs to start quickly and even then it would idle like dogshit.
That being said your oil consumption and possible runaway condition sound more troubling. I would confirm injection timing and go from there. Are there any engineers marks on parts of the pump? (can look like neon paint) Maybe someone before you played with fueling and it's too high. Does the car smoke under boost?