The government is the only thing that can tell Epic what to do at this point, but more often than not they ask Epic what should be done. It's frustrating. Kudos to Joe Biden for telling Judy Faulkner in a meeting that people aren't too stupid to decide what doctor they want looking at their records.
The chokepoint to interoperability was there before EHRs, they just didn't fix the problem that people want fixed. Keep in mind the MBAs running HC systems are also not incented to have records flow to competitors. They get plenty of blame too.
Then again the government makes things difficult too. Most of the bitching people do about EHRs is the documentation they're required to input, but that's due to regulation and claim denials much more than the inherent design.
Plenty of blame to go around!