You are exactly right.
The electronic medical records that you cited are just one reason. There is obviously both a good side and a bad side to EMRs. HIPAA regulations, which we are told (i.e. the surface agenda) are designed for the purpose of privacy and portability of your records, do serve those purposes … to some extent. But your records were actually more private when they were just in your health care practitioner's office. Now that they are passed over the Internet, anyone can intercept them. If hackers can hack into the Pentagon, surely they can illegally access your records.
But worse than the hackers is the government having access to all your records (i.e. the hidden agenda). ALL this information is being gathered and stored, permanently, and can be used against you just as easily as it can be used for you.
http://www.groundzeromedia.org/flavor-of-the-weak/
When we get into mandatory DNA testing (which will be coming, for your health and safety, of course <sarcasm>) as well as mandatory chipping (which will be coming, first on a voluntary basis, of course), the situation will become much more serious, even ominous. This information will be used in rationing care, making decisions as to whether end of life planning should be initiated and all care (except palliative care) terminated, applying insurance surcharges for higher risk individuals (for those that carry the genetic markers for diabetes, for example), explaining why you don't qualify for anything from gun ownership to a driver's license to a loan because of your lack of mental or physical health (but actually to surreptitiously coerce, threaten, or apply opunishment), etc.
Medicine has adopted the evidence-based orientation, big time, hook, line, and sinker. On the surface, it all sounds very logical, rational, and reasonable. One should have evidence for what one does. There should be scientific research to justify treatments protocols and therapies and there should be algorithms that guide assessment and treatment. However, one of the dark sides to this orientation is that for treatment to be evidence based, it generally must be something that is already being done. And often, the so-called hard scientific evidence is skewed by the opinions, beliefs, prejudices, and jealousies of the health care researcher and/or practitioner (climate change controversy, anyone?). So if someone develops a new, more advanced method of treatment that goes against the prevailing paradigm, such treatment is labelled "experimental", will not be reimbursed, and is often vilified and denigrated by the less talented and unenlightened establishment . In many ways, innovation is being stifled, not promoted … UNLESS, and this is a big unless, it adds to the power, wealth, and control of the establishment. If it gives control and health independence back to the masses at no or low cost, it will likely be ignored, squelched. or vigorously opposed.
The government is imposing more and more bureaucratic burdens upon health care practitioners in terms of required documentation and testing which require more and more time of the practtioner and take more time away from them treating patients. And to add insult to injury, the practitioners are having their reimbursement cut, often drastically. When your doctor asks you (in person or on a form), do you have a gun in your house, he's not asking because he's particularly interested in receiving an answer which will help him treat you better. He's asking because the government is mandating that he ask. It's simply cross confirmation of gun ownership which can be access by the government through your medical records.
We had a recent proposal from Medicare to have a 17 page uptake form. Truly, if one took the time to fill this all out, there'd be virtually no time left for treatment. If this form was all about your medical history, present medical problems, signs and symptoms, etc., the requirement for this documentation would be more acceptable (although 17 pages is still overly long and unnnecessary). But there are questions about your ethnic, cultural, religious, social, psychological, sexual, etc., history, for example, that often have little to do with your present problem (versus other more specific and content rich information) and often, quite frankly, are none of the healthcare practitioner's business.
We have co-payments now that are up to 50%! That's not insurance, That's a fraudulent misrepresentation of something else that has been passed off to employers and/or the patient as insurance. The only ones who are benefitting from this situation are the powerful insurors and the politicians they have in their pockets.
If you think all these changes in healthcare are about cutting costs, think again. I can recall an incident where a hospital employed healthcare practitioner coerced a former patient of mine to use hospital services rather than mine because the practitioner was financially aligned with the hospital (a relationship which, by the way, he had not revealed to the patient). The hospital's charges were THREE TIMES my charges. And the result was unsatisfactory. The patient wound up sueing the practitioner and the hospital, successfully I may add and rightfully so I may add. He ultimately came to see me and we resolved his problem in a relatively short period of time at a fraction of the expense he incurred at the hospital. It's all about power, control, and money.
In my own case, we have new G-codes that we have to document, quantitative functional testing that we have to do, and assignment of disability rankings (which, often, are impossible to do in an accurate, objective, fair, and truthful manner). And for this, if the present law doesn't change, we will get a 33% pay cut as of April 1. Quite frankly, it will drive a fair percentage of practices in my specialty out of business. I love what I do and I am one of the best at what I do but, quite frankly, all this nonsense is driving me towards an early retirement from my chosen field.
Healthcare and insurance is but another tool by which you will be controlled more and more, tighter and tigher. And because of a multitude of changes in the world, it will be harder and harder for you to stay healthy and resist the tide of this change … which is exactly what they want.