New York Daily News

If it walks like a quack & talks like a quack...

DONALD DICTATED CRAZY ’15 hEALTh REpORT

- DR. ARTHUR CAPLAN

This is what happens when your physician is a spin doctor. President Trump can’t have it both ways on the subject of Harold Bornstein, the New York doctor who says the President’s goons barged into his office and took all of Trump’s medical records. Is Bornstein the quack who blabbed about the President’s Propecia prescripti­on, or is he the medical genius that wrote that Trump would be the healthiest President in U.S. history? Bornstein, 70, had been Trump’s personal doctor for more than 35 years until a falling out in the weeks after Trump took office. According to Bornstein, two days after he told a newspaper that he had for years prescribed a hair growth medicine for Trump, 71, the President’s henchmen stormed his office and took off with all of his X-rays and patient charts. If my personal physician had shared unauthoriz­ed informatio­n about my health, I would want a new doctor and all my records back, too. But I wouldn’t behave like Trump’s friends in Russia and launch a full-scale invasion. Clearly there’s something percolatin­g in Trump’s medical history that he is desperate to keep protected. But he doesn’t have the right to send his lawyer and a goon to go haul them away. This is how you operate in totalitari­an states. Besides, medical records are shared property. Doctors have a right to hold on to them for billing purposes and to protect themselves against malpractic­e suits. They don’t, however, have the right to share them. But there could be digital copies that Trump’s tough guys missed. The truth is that we may never know exactly how much Trump weighs. And I really don’t care. All I really want to know is this: Does he have a condition or problem that will shorten his life or impair his ability to do the job? Bornstein said he is speaking out now after seeing reports that former White House doctor Ronny Jackson will not return to his post after being considered to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. Jackson has denied allegation­s that he was loosely prescribin­g pain medication­s as the White House doctor. So these were the best doctors that could be found to look after the leader of the free world? That shouldn’t be what the doctor ordered.

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