What Your Doctor Won't Tell You About Getting Older: An Insider's Survival Manual for Outsmarting the Health-Care System

by Mark Lachs

Aging well frequently involves feeling your way blindly through a complex medical dealing with multiple doctors, facing baffling financial decisions, and figuring out whether you or a parent needs care outside the home. What Your Doctor Won't Tell You About Getting Older turns the lights on, illuminating potential pitfalls and showing a way around them. This book is an indispensible survival guide, gathering all the information you need to have but that too often doctors just don't give you. Writing with great experience and good humor, renowned geriatrician Mark Lachs explains how to choose your doctors, stay out of the emergency room, plan financially for retirement, outfit your house to stay safe, and, most important, how to have as many healthy years as possible.

Genres: Nonfiction, Health

400 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2011

Reviews

[Christine Klotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have worked in the field of aging for decades and was skeptical that I would gain any new ideas from Dr. Lachs, however I gained several useful suggestions and strategies. I particularly liked his practical suggestions for navigating the health care system to receive the care you want - no more, no less. This book is a valuable resource for anyone who is beginning to realize they won't be immune from the realities of aging, or anyone caring for an aging parent. We need to learn how to speak up and advocate for ourselves. Dr. Lachs has some clear ideas to do just that.

[Annette Cass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be mandatory reading for everybody over 40. Written by a gerontologist - but applies to anybody having to deal with health system. Has become the basis of a presentation I've been giving on how to have an effective doctor's visit. Makes good reading. Lachs is a professor at Cornell Medical College/New York Presbyterian. The name of the book tries to be "sexy" which may turn off some readers.

[~☆~Autumn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not like the writing and skipped around some but found it to be not very helpful.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good info on getting what we need from our health care system as we get older. Interesting perspective from a very experienced geriatrician.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great comprehensive tips for the elderly to navigate the medical/legal/social/financial aspects of getting older in the USA written in large font but long.

[Doris Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked Lachs's earnest trying-to-help attitude. He includes practical advice for planning ahead with money and life-style and gives references. I did not like his patronizing talking-down-to attitude. I guess that arrogance is part of being a doctor.

He hints about the faults of the system but always protecting it, one has to read between the lines to see it is worse than his hints. Most people are probably unaware of the pitfalls he brings out about the medical system.

The issues he discusses here are relevant to patients of every age, not just elders.

The chapter beginning quotes cited were entertaining and thought-provoking. The book–ending quote by Will Rogers was: "One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been."

Inferior binding: "Penguin Books, Published by the Penguin Group" has poorly published the hardback I read, the pages were bound sloppily (a few pages were even incompletely bound and hanging) and the paper quality was inferior. I guess the price of $17 reflected that.