EPA Fracking Study Back On The Table; ObamaCare Sticker Shock -- August 13, 2014

Updates

August 24, 2016: President Obama's Energy Czar says "fracking is good for the US." Specifically stated that in a speech to reassure folks that fracking was safe after the study below was "back on the table."
 

Original Post

 

This is not good, going into a possible Hillary presidency. Hillary has said she wants to ban fracking and plans a "war on fracking" like the Obama "war on coal." The "Scientific Board" wants a "re-do" on that EPA study that said fracking was safe.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) draft assessment of hydraulic fracturing’s impact on drinking water is lacking in several critical areas, scientific advisors working with EPA have concluded. The Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) – which includes members of academia, industry and interest groups – found EPA’s overall assessment approach to the hydraulic fracturing water cycle (HFWC) to be comprehensive.

However, the SAB stated in an Aug. 11 letter that more information from EPA was needed to support the draft assessment’s conclusions. In a report released last year, EPA said it did not find evidence that potential mechanisms by which fracking could impact drinking water had led to widespread, systemic impacts on U.S. drinking water resources.

EPA also stated in the June 2015 report that the number of identified cases where drinking water resources were affected were small compared with the number of hydraulically fractured wells. The SAB said it was particularly concerned that EPA did not support quantitatively in its conclusion about the lack of evidence of widespread, systemic impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources and failed to describe the systems of interest, impact scale, or definitions of systemic and widespread. 

There are some incredibly powerful forces that want US fracking to be banned: major oil with huge off-shore assets that are not being drilled; Iran; Saudi Arabia; those in the federal government who support Iran; every US environmental group; east coast governors.

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ObamaCare

From The WSJ: ObamaCare premiums are soaring 18% to 23% across the country.

Hillary Clinton admits she’s running to extend the Obama legacy, and so far she’s had a free ride in defending it. She hasn’t even had to explain the increasingly obvious failures of ObamaCare to deliver the affordable insurance that Democrats promised.

The Affordable Care Act is now rolling into its fourth year, and even liberals are starting to concede that the insurance exchanges are in distress and Congress may have to reopen the law. Premiums are high and soaring; insurers have booked multimillion-dollar losses and are terminating plans; and the customer pool is smaller, older and less healthy than the official projections.

The natural result is another round of rate shock for 2017. Insurers in 49 states have submitted their premium requests to regulators, and the average “enrollment-weighted” rate increase, which accounts for market share, is in the range of 18% to 23%. The Congressional Budget Office projected 8%.

Liberals call this evidence anecdotal and premature, and they’re right that bad anecdotes are easy to find: Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, a model of the integrated care that ObamaCare attempts to promote, wants a 40% rate increase for its insurance arm. The other liberal claim is that insurance commissioners will approve rate increases somewhat smaller than the insurer requests (maybe) and that consumers can switch to cheaper plans (assuming any are left). 

The easy fix: a national health service run by the federal government. If Hillary wins and her supporters take the Senate, it's very possible. Folks forget that presidents are change agents and there are few things Hillary would like more to do than fix ObamaCare.

And folks wonder why retail sales are flat.