I am actually not opposed to the "CD you have to buy" policy. If I was hospital network admin I would not want people just plugging in random usb sticks into my network.
I think the expectation is that these organizations should be able to send this data to each other. That they was put the data on a disk and then give that to a patient who the drives it over to another part of town and hands the disk over is a ridiculous waste of everyone's time.
It also highlights how far the entrenched vendors and hospitals will go to keep their customers "locked in."
And in most cases they can send that data to each other, at least in the sense that their existing systems are capable of interoperating based on open standards. But to make it work the provider organizations often have to configure and test data interfaces with other organizations. That's an expensive process and no one wants to pay for it.
