A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts. I turned my head to the door and said, “Come on in.” Nurse N. opened the door, and pushed along a cart with a laptop on top. Nurse N. is a pleasant woman, ready to retire. She takes my blood pressure and pulse, then returns to the laptop and enters my vitals. She asks a few questions. Have you been feeling this, have you been feeling that. She clicks the mouse recording my answers. “Now I am going to ask you some mental health questions,” she says, moving the mouse around. “Have you been feeling any symptoms of depression?” . . .
It only takes me a moment to respond. “Respectfully, nurse, I am not going to answer that question.”
“Well,” she smiles, used to my being a bit of a curmudgeon, “I have to ask. I don’t seem to have a place where I can say ‘refused to answer’.”
“Is there a place where you can say I responded, ‘pound sand’?”
Later I tell my doctor. “Look, I refused to answer those mental health questions. I do not want an electronic record of my mental state floating around. In fact, I wish to hell your notes about my medical conditions were just on paper.”
“I completely understand.” she replied.
“What bothers me is that I ought to be able to talk to you about how I feel. I think of you as a friend, but given that the IRS will be running Obamacare, and the IRS has already released private, privileged information to friends of the Obama administration, I do not want to have my 2nd Amendment rights taken away because I told you I am feeling blue about something.”
My doctor nodded “I completely support you in that.” she said. In the past, I have crabbed at her about the ‘No Weapons’ sign in the window of her office. As it turns out, this is a policy of her medical partnership. She personally has no problems with me being armed during a visit, should I choose to be.
I care very much for my doctor. She’s a good egg, and has been my primary physician for over 20 years, poking and prodding me and my children, helping us stay healthy. It sucks that her partners have fallen into line with the leftist establishment over civilian disarmament and government management of medical records.
My wife and I will likely look for a concierge doctor who does not take insurance. I would rather pay cash money for an office visit and know that my medical records are not floating around in the ether. The cat may already be out of the bag for my other health conditions, but the mental health questions entered into a laptop were the last straw.