Who cares what its intent is? What should matter is how it will be used. No matter how many times I read on my social security card that it cannot be used for identification or tracking purposes (it actually says it on my card) it is used for tracking and identification purposes. Pretending that stuff like that doesn't happen is just covering your ears and shouting.
Yes Damo....that is exactly what it would be used for....and in this case....that is a very good thing. Now before you get your "Big brother is evil and can't do anything right" panties in a wad try reasoning.
The main purpose for this card is so that not only can the hospital identify you as a person, it also scans the data for your medical records. Making them portable in a standard formant. Not only will any physician you wish to see or have to see (as in an emergency) will have complete access to the patients history, pre-existing conditions, treatments recieved, how they responded, medicines perscribed in the past and currenlty being used, their interactions with the patient, complications, allergic reactions, etc, etc,. It also provides all the past billing data providing easier and standard access into billing and payment.
So with this scannable card an persons entire medical history becomes protable. It become THEIR property and not the property of the Doctor that treated them or the Hospital or Clinic where they were treated. It provides instant information for a physician who may be unaware that you are on a prescription that could interact badly with a prescription that they would like to prescribe. Emergency room physicians and staff would have immediate life saving information about that persons medical history available at their fingertips. Physicians treating life threatening illnesses can immeadiatly access a patients entire medical history so they can make quick life saving decisions. Had an MRI taken of your bad back 10 years ago? They have immeadiate access to that too after you have a car accident. Not only that but you would also be able to collect data, objectively, on medical procedures, tests, operations, modalities and drug prescriptions to not only determine their efficacy but their true costs and the actual value being recieved for that cost by consumers/patiens.
So before ya'll get on your "Government can't do anything right" soap box consider this. Yes, this sort of information technology and identification system can certainly be abused by persons in power and the appropriate laws and regulations will need to be implemented to prevent such abuses. Having said that, the benefits that it would provide to individuals, health care professionals, emergency professional and public health care institutions are staggering in the positive benefits that can be provided by making a patients medical history portable and standardized as can be done by utilizing this technology.
I'd challenge you to research the benefits of such sytems being used in Hong Kong and Taiwan who utilize such national health care scannable ID cards and the very real benefits they provide before you discount them out of hand on some uninformed libertarian rant. I bet if you asked any licensed physician in this nation that if we could issue national health care scannable ID cards that make an patients entire medical history and data available to them that 99.9999% of them would ask to start issuing them yesterday!