EHRs in 2014

This is more of a PSA than something I want to discuss. I'm also new here so I'm not sure if this is the right place for this. Here are the partial contents of a management e-mail I received this morning:

President Obama has set a goal for every American to have the benefit of an electronic health record by 2014. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes 18 billion dollars to increase adoption of Electronic Medical Records.(EMR) Software and systems are needed that can leverage EHRs’ wealth of information and analytic powers and translate the great potential into tangible public health successes.

I know many of you live "off the grid"...I wish I did, but this note concerns me for the following reasons:

1) Given the attitude of this latest group of politicians (IMO, "we know better than you, so just trust us and you'll be better off with our health care decisions for you"), I think this would be a way to force compliance on people. That, if you don't have a EHR--ie., "in the system"--you won't be given treatment/or, when you get treatment, you are now entered in the system. Getting health care services results in you being "back on the grid," even if it's just a blip.

2) Typical of these types of politicians, they will of course want to be in charge of this information. Personally, I wouldn't mind having my medical records in/on a SmartCard that I can take to any MD and they can see my history. But, I want to be in charge of that...no one else. I think they will use EHRs to take little more away from the individual and add to the collective by using it as leverage. Think about your SSN...up until recently, it defined you.

Again, I'm not trying to start a political rant...I just wanted you to know what's on the horizon and another reason to start getting healthy to where you don't really need to see a doc that much.