Obama threw a bone to the software companies by creating HIPAA AND the electronic medical record law. HIPAA prevents people from sharing data on a platform that is not CCHIT compliant. The law mandating EMR (or else doctors and hospitals get paid less if they cannot show they are using it) is a big profit center for software companies. It’s not the medical industry driving this data jail, it’s the software companies. It goes all the way back to Microsoft who showed that you can become a trillionaire if you create a product that requires ‘licensed specialists’ to service and maintain.