In attacking one another over health record disclosures Wednesday night, the Democratic presidential rivals highlighted the reality that it’s typical for candidates and officeholders not to release all of their medical information.
On Wednesday, Pete Buttigieg went after Bernie Sanders, 78, who suffered a heart attack last year. He tore up the Vermont senator for reneging on a pledge to release detailed health records, given that Sanders instead provided the public with four pages of doctor’s notes.
“Transparency matters, especially living through the Trump era,” Buttigieg said at the Democratic debate in Nevada. “Now under President Obama, the standard was the president would release full medical records, do a physical, and release the readout. I think that is the standard we should hold ourselves to.”
Buttigieg, 38, hasn’t released a doctor’s letter but has pledged to do so.
Sanders countered that his campaign has released “quite as much as any other candidate has” on personal medical information. His assertion bears out among candidates close to his age: Joe Biden, 77; Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 70; and Michael Bloomberg, 77, have released doctor’s letters that were three pages, two pages, and one page, respectively.
Producing a doctor’s letter has been standard practice for some time, but there have been exceptions. When Biden ran as Obama’s running mate 11 years ago, he released 49 pages of medical history to reporters. And during that same campaign, the late Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain released 1,100 pages to reporters but not to the public.
History reveals that presidents regularly withhold information. A Washington Examiner review of presidential archives shows that there has never been a set standard for what information is released to the public and what isn’t.
Presidents, just like anyone else, have the power under federal law to decide which parts of their medical information can be shared. No law demands their disclosure or that they are complete.
Presidents don’t necessarily share information every year. Former President George H.W. Bush had at least four routine medical exams in office, while President Bill Clinton shared the results of six exams over two terms. President George W. Bush had at least five exams, and Obama had at least four.
Reporters have sometimes pushed for more information, particularly in circumstances where presidents appear to be more secretive. During Clinton’s 10-minute health press conference in 2001, reporters asked his physician, Dr. Connie Mariano, whether Clinton would make complete medical information available. She replied, “No other president has released their entire records.”
“What we have done in the last eight years is released summaries of our physical findings and then made those part of the record,” she said. “So, in essence, that’s in the records, the things we released.”
Some disclosed information from such doctor press conferences can potentially be embarrassing, including whether a president has gained weight or has hemorrhoids, or whether he has ever had a sexually transmitted disease. Presidents haven’t disclosed the existence of the latter, but the second Bush’s records, for instance, noted that he had never had an STD.
In general, presidents share weight, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate, as well as whether results were normal from blood tests and X-rays. They sometimes detail what medicines they’re taking, how much exercise they’re getting, and, sometimes, whether they’re suffering from pain, received vaccinations, or had moles removed. Robust psychiatric evaluations, if conducted, haven’t been made public.
President Trump’s former physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson, took the unprecedented step in 2018 of taking questions about his boss’s health for about an hour. Months later, however, the reliability of Jackson’s account came into question when Trump nominated him to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. Jackson became the subject of rumors from anonymous sources who said he would get drunk on the job and was improperly prescribing medications to White House staff. Jackson fiercely denied the accusations but eventually withdrew his name from consideration.
Since then, Trump, 73, has followed the tradition of his predecessors and released only short doctor’s notes. At the end of last year, he took an unscheduled visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and the White House released a short memo saying he had an “interim checkup.” The occurrence was uncommon for presidents, and no findings have been released from the exam.
