Is Biden’s doctor covering up the president’s last physical? 

Dr. Kevin O’Connor, former President Joe Biden’s longtime personal doctor and reportedly sometime family business associate, refused to answer questions about Biden’s health at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee meeting on July 9. Asked to testify about Biden’s physical and mental condition, the doctor invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer based on doctor-patient confidentiality — or was it to not incriminate himself?

O’Connor’s lack of response only raises more doubts about Biden’s health and his administration’s cover-up of it. 

According to a statement from O’Connor’s legal team, “On the advice of his legal counsel, Dr. O’Connor refused to answer questions that invaded the well-established legal privilege that protects confidential matters between physicians and their patients.”

While the expectation of privacy in the doctor-patient relationship is fundamental and sacrosanct, that expectation is greatly reduced when we’re talking about the president, who lives in a glass White House. Many issues that are normally nobody’s business become everybody’s business when it comes to the president — and that includes medical issues. 

On Feb. 28, 2024, O’Connor released to the public the results of Biden’s most recent (and last) presidential physical. Although it has apparently been taken down from the White House website, it is still available at the National Archives. It is a public document. If nothing else, O’Connor could have restricted his comments to what is revealed in the summary of the physical.

The document highlights the medical conditions Biden was being treated for at the time: obstructive sleep apnea, non-valvular fibrillation, low lipid levels, reflux, his “stiffened gait,” and several other conditions. No mental health assessment was made because O’Connor thought it wasn’t necessary. Or maybe it just wasn’t prudent. 

In the summary, O’Connor asserts the 2024 “Physical exam is essentially unchanged from baseline,” which presumably is referring to his first presidential exam in 2021. And he added at the release that Biden is a “healthy, active, robust 81-year-old.” But that conclusion is questionable, given Biden’s performance in the presidential debate just four months later. 

While it would be totally inappropriate for a doctor to publicly release the results of your or my physical exam, the American people have come to expect presidents to produce a summary of their annual physical. President Trump’s physician, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, released a summary of Trump’s physical on April 13. And the White House just revealed Trump’s chronic vein problem, even though it doesn’t affect his job performance.

People want to know if the person holding the most important job in the world is healthy and capable of doing the job. When a president goes under anesthesia for some medical procedure, reporters inform the public. If the president contracts COVID-19, as both Trump and Biden did, the news reports it.  

Note that Trump’s physical included a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test, which can indicate prostate cancer. The result was normal. Biden’s released results did not include a PSA test, and we recently discovered he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Even former presidents may not have much of an expectation of privacy on medical issues. 

While Biden’s medical conditions can no longer affect presidential duties, it’s important to know whether there was a medical cover up so that, if there was, steps can be taken to prevent it in the future. 

So, what can Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, do about O’Connor’s stonewalling?  

First, the simplest solution is for Comer to send Biden an official letter requesting him to allow O’Connor to discuss results of Biden’s physicals. If Biden gives his consent — which I doubt he will — O’Connor can quit hiding behind doctor-patient confidentiality.

If Biden refuses to give his consent, Comer should invite O’Connor back to discuss Biden’s last two physical exams. They are public information, so O’Connor shouldn’t have any problem discussing the results that have been made public. 

If O’Connor refuses, Comer has another option. When O’Connor initially released the results of the president’s physical, he claimed that doctors in several specialties, without naming names, reviewed and signed off on O’Connor’s report.  

Comer could ask for a list of the doctors who reviewed the data and ask them to testify as to whether they had reviewed and confirmed the physical’s results. 

Although such hearings would no doubt be partisan, there is a broader policy issue at stake. The public needs to be able to trust information about a president’s medical condition. Given what we’ve seen from the Biden administration, that’s not the case. 

Merrill Matthews is a public policy and political analyst and the co-author of “On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.”