Dr. Nancy Snyderman Show Segment
Nancy Synderman, MD Medical Corespondent on the ABC Television Network’s “Good Morning America” Given: May 22, 1996 at AARP Biennial Convention- Denver Colorado, 1996 How To Be A Wise Health Consumer “Do you know how to choose a good health plan or read a medical bill? Find out why being an educated health care consumer can your time and money in the long run.”
The following is a portion of her presentation
...are losing their shirts, particularly in inner city hospitals and teaching hospitals, you still have to take care of trauma, have to take care of training residents and it's important for me that typical citizens like you not get caught in the middle. It's unconscionable to me as a physician that I, many times, have to call and get permission to do basic things for patients, but we're told that it's not cost effective, when, in fact, CEO's of many of these large corporate groups go home with 50 million dollar paychecks. It's bad medicine and it's not, frankly, how medicine should be evolving. I'm hoping the pendulum will swing back, but I don't think it's going to happen in the near future. In the mean time, it's not going to, it's not going to swing back as a trickle down from the corporate entities. It will only swing back as part of the grass roots phenomenon, people who cry foul, and I don't want to have to see it happen with regard to people getting hurt or people dying, but it really does mean that each of you individually can make more of a difference than you probably ever thought and that's by being a good, well informed, pesky, greasy wheel. It's also apparent that as we talk about our health and where we want to be at this stage in our lives, that we remember that there are children falling through the cracks every day. We still have babies not getting immunized in this country, we still aren't feeding our kids well enough. Somehow it doesn't make sense to me that the richest country on Earth can't afford to basically feed its people and take care of its peoples health care needs. So that, I think, is also something that until the day each of us drops dead, we really have to keep on the front burner as we try to make this place, this whole country for as wonderful as it is, even better.
Nancy Synderman, MD Medical Corespondent on the ABC Television Network’s “Good Morning America” Given: May 22, 1996 at AARP Biennial Convention- Denver Colorado, 1996 How To Be A Wise Health Consumer “Do you know how to choose a good health plan or read a medical bill? Find out why being an educated health care consumer can your time and money in the long run.”
PRESS CONFERENCE Q: How do we become a wise health consumer? The best way you can be a good consumer and a good patient is to be smart and well informed and that means reading, keeping lists, having questions written out when you see your doctor, and making sure that you have a doctor who is willing to have a conversation with you. If you have a doctor who doesn't have the time for you, then that doctor is basically saying you're not important to me and then I think you should look for another doctor.
Q: How important is it for women to take care of their own health? I think, I think we, as women, have to recognize that when we become ill our families fall apart and we can not afford to put our health on the back burner because when we're healthy, everyone else stays healthy. So trickle-down medicine doesn't work. We have to make sure that while we're getting everyone else to the doctor, we go to the doctor and take good care of ourselves. My mother just turned 69 on Monday and I called her and I thanked her for taking such good care of herself over the years because in so doing, she told me that she wasn't selfish, and that she cared about her kids enough to try to stick around. It's the best gift you can give anybody.
Q: How important is the need for women to understand the physical and emotional changes associated with Menopause? I think we have to stop framing Menopause as a disease and look at it as a lifestyle change. It's part of who we are as women. It's part of the metamorphosis and when women in their 30's don't want to talk about it, so you know, getting there beats the alternative of not getting there and remembering how well your brain functions has a real big role as to how well your body's going to function so you sit back, you take in the information, and I think you embrace this time of your life. To me, the 40's are very much about figuring out where you want to be for the next few decades. You've gone through self esteem issues, you know who you are, your families are on their way, you know, you can coast for a while. You can sort of relish the fact that you've achieved certain things and frankly, and celebrate the fact that you've had a pretty good life.
Q: What advice do you have for people who have given up on living because of poor health? You have to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. If you don't have anyone to live for, there are plenty of people out in the world who need someone. You get your rear end out of bed, you put your clothes on, you eat breakfast and put on some makeup and you go volunteer, you go to the local shelter, the local hospital, there's always something for an able bodied person to do and when I hear someone say, "I don't have anything to live for." I think that's the height of selfishness.
Q: How do you find a good Doctor when living in a rural area? Sometimes in smaller towns it's hard because there isn't a lot of choice. I think you have two options. One, to really figure out logistically, does it make sense to travel a distance to find a doctor you like or do you just sort of say, "Eh, not a great choice but I'm going to the doctor who I think is the smartest and then will get me the best health care." Sometimes there are smart doctors with lousy personalities and you have to figure out the trade off and decide whether that's good enough for you.
Q: Can a GP provide medical treatment for gynecological problems? It's not a popular statement that I'm going to make but I think women need to see Gynecologists. I don't think Internists and Family Doctors should be doing pelvic exams. I want someone who can do these in his or her sleep and knows every little nuance and there's excellent evidence to show that if you have certain Cancers, and Ovarian Cancer is the best example, the first crack at treating that Cancer is the best shot at cure. You putz around and miss it the first time and your cure rate drops precipitously. So it's a real time, I think, for women to recognize that OB/GYN’s are an integral part of who we are as women and the kind of health care we should get.
Q. Thank you. You're welcome.
