U.S. Will Offer Doctors Free Electronic Records System - New York Times: "The Vista project began a few years ago when Medicare officials realized that help for small medical practices was in its own backyard. The federal government had already paid hundreds of millions of dollars to develop Vista, and now uses it in the Veterans Administration's 1,300 inpatient and outpatient facilities, which maintain more than 10 million records and treat more than five million veterans a year. Why not give Vista to doctors? In fact, though few knew, Vista had been available all along to anyone who submitted a Freedom of Information Act request." Why?