Medicine may not fit the pattern (personally I'd want to know where I stand, even if the news is bad), but I took the OP to be saying "American firms prefer not

Medicine may not fit the pattern (personally I'd want to know where I stand, even if the news is bad), but I took the OP to be saying "American firms prefer not to go on record saying they screwed up, since that would naturally be brought up in subsequent legal proceedings".