This is almost certainly not true for a lot of medical data (in Canada and Australia at least, don't know about the US). There was a rather interesting example

This is almost certainly not true for a lot of medical data (in Canada and Australia at least, don't know about the US). There was a rather interesting example in Queensland ~two years ago when govt. health sector payroll data (from an outgoing system) was deleted due to privacy concerns, and then the replacement system mis-functioned (never really worked) and the entire state's health payroll information was lost. $200 million and counting to fix the lost data.