But no patient — not even a president — should be forced to share medical information they’d rather keep between themselves and their doctor, he and other experts said. “We need to know if the patient is depressed, if the patient can’t pee, if the patient’s in pain, if the patient is forgetting things. And if doctors notice a spike in cancer cases among people clustered in a geographic area, that too is passed along for public health officials to investigate. Besides, forcing sitting and would-be presidents to waive their right to doctor-patient confidentiality wouldn’t guarantee that voters learn the truth, Rockman said. A president could simply shop around for a doctor willing to obfuscate in a medical report, for instance.

Source: Los Angeles Times July 24, 2024 18:17 UTC