[deathanatos]

Your comment is essentially borderline conspiracy theory that HIPAA is somehow setting up a surveillance state.

> As a government regime, do you want to build an effective surveillance system where health data on large numbers of suspects can be pulled into a data fusion system at the push of a button, once a judicial framework for rubber-stamping is in place?

Sure, and I'm right there with you that people should protest frameworks for judicial rubber-stamping. But HIPAA is like the only privacy law in America, basically, and having it mandate that medical data is encrypted can be good on its own.

While there are standardized formats for medical data, many are so ill-adopted that building some sort of surveillance system would be a monumental task; the bulk of data I've worked with has been in poorly documented, non-standard formats.

> Both of these are easier when smaller vendors are forced out and larger vendors are the only ones left standing

Clearer regulations and standardized, interoperable data formats benefit smaller players.