Classic regulatory capture. Once you're big enough lobby effectively, get legislators to pull the ladder up from behind you.
This reminds me: I was working at a small health services startup in 2009. We had a good relationship with a number of small-scale healthcare providers, and when the ARRA was passed mandating that all providers move to electronic health records, we evaluated the concept of getting into that business. We concluded that there was so much legal red tape in that sector that the only way to legally create an EHR product would be if your lawyers were the ones writing the laws governing them (which would have been true for Epic and McKessen).
This reminds me: I was working at a small health services startup in 2009. We had a good relationship with a number of small-scale healthcare providers, and when the ARRA was passed mandating that all providers move to electronic health records, we evaluated the concept of getting into that business. We concluded that there was so much legal red tape in that sector that the only way to legally create an EHR product would be if your lawyers were the ones writing the laws governing them (which would have been true for Epic and McKessen).