From my reading, I'm kinda with your endocrinologist on this one. Being "pre-diabetic" is like being a little bit pregnant. It means life-style changes, at the very least.
Yes, I find the pre-diabetic range easier to manage. I've been doing a lot of reading on a couple of boards specifically for folks with D since my diagnosis. With pre-D, I am focusing on managing my BG levels with food and exercise. A lot of the full-blown type 2s I read were diagnosed and immediately put on medicine and insulin. They didn't have the opportunity to try to manage it with diet and exercise alone.
I dont' know what your numbers are, and from my reading it sure seems like everybody with pre-D and D is a little bit different. But I can tell you what I'm finding.
My last doctor's tests, about a month and a half ago:
a1c - 6.7 (with "normal" being 4.3 to 5.8, and diabetic being over 7)
FBG - 118 (with normal being 99 or lower, and diabetic being over 120 or 125)
Since then, I got a blood glucose monitor from Walmart (least expensive testing strips, if you're going to buy them yourself) and began testing my fasting blood and after each meal, to see how my BG changes depending on what I eat. I've lowered my carb intake, and started exercising much more. As you can see, I have a great deal of weight to lose, and I've lost about 18 pounds in the last three months.
My fasting readings after a month or so of this are already much lower -- usually between 100 and 110. My post-prandial (pp) numbers are pretty steadily non-spikey when I stick to the low-carb, so I expect that my next a1c (which shows your average BG for three months) will be lower, too.
Some folks with D have good BG response after meals, and just have a high FBG (fasting, in the morning). Others have good FBG, but spike after meals (which will show up in a high a1c). Others have both, like me.
I've learned an amazing amount in the past month. I highly recommend
Blood Sugar 101 for some basic info. She's pretty strict on the low-carb, but she explains stuff really well. The ADA diet has more carbs than she recommends, but so long as you know how your BG reacts to the foods you eat, you can make informed choices.
I also hang out, as I said, at a couple other diabetes boards. I love 3FC, especially in my "home" forum of 100+, but the traffic isn't really strong in this particular forum. You might want to check out other forums specificaly for folks with D. Most of them have a pre-D forum, too, where you can get better answers than you'll get from me. I've just read a lot, so far. I'm newly diagnosed, too.
http://www.diabetesforums.com/forum/
http://www.diabetesdaily.com/forum/
http://www.dlife.com/