Pro Publica (h/t: John Dean) posted “The EPA’s First Fracking Rules — Limited and Delayed.” What’s the hold up?

Especially when people are suffering, like the fracking victim who said to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, “We need help… I have two neighbors who have now been diagnosed with cancer.”

Especially when toxic chemicals shot into the earth are causing major health and environmental problems.

Especially after the information that’s been shared via the superb film Gasland.

Especially when Americans understand exactly how fracking works, or even what it is.

Pro Publica on the fracking rules:

[T]hey address a single problem with natural gas: air pollution.

“These rules do not resolve chronic water, public health and other problems associated with fracking and natural gas,” [ Erik Schlenker-Goodrich of the Western Environmental Law Center] said.

The agency is actually barred from regulating the impact of fracking on groundwater because, in 2005, Congress exempted fracking from the Safe Water Drinking Act. Congressional proposals to give the EPA more oversight have so far failed.

GOP: Oversight = Big Government = bad.

Intrusion into the private lives and health of patients and their relationships with their physicians = Hunky dory!

Which leads us to today’s L.A. Times, where another disturbing article caught my attention. This one is how a Pennsylvania law on fracking chemicals is worrying doctors. Those GOP “small government” advocates sure have a funny way of shrinking government, the latest example being a new Pennsylvania law regulating natural gas production that’s coming between doctors and their patients. Where have we heard that before?

The law compels natural gas companies to give inquiring healthcare professionals information about the chemicals used in their drilling and production processes — but only after the doctors or nurses sign a confidentiality agreement.

Some physicians complain that the law is vague and lacks specific guidelines about how they can use and share the information with patients, colleagues and public health officials, putting them at risk of violating the measure. But refusing to sign the confidentiality agreement denies them access to information that could help treat patients.

“I just want to make my patients healthy,” Pare said, adding that she might sign an agreement. “And I can’t do that if I don’t know what it is that’s making them sick.“

The possibility that increased natural gas development could threaten public heath lies at the core of resistance to a controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

“I just want to make my patients healthy.” Imagine that. But healing people isn’t the priority, see. And guess who’s a big supporter of this new law: Republican Gov. Tom “You Just Have to Close Your Eyes” Corbett, Willard M. Romney endorser.

“It exposes us to lawsuits from our own patients, who might say, ‘Why didn’t you sign the confidentiality agreement?’ or if you did, ‘Why didn’t you share the information with so-and-so?‘” said Dr. Mehernosh Khan, who has filed suit against the state over the provision. “The law sets up a precedent for doctors not being able to practice medicine properly.”

The War on Women is now expanding to the War on Patients, or as I like to call them, people in need of medical care. If good health and well being get in the way of the corporate agenda and/or power grabs by politicians and Big Biz, then pfft! so be it.

A War on Health is a war on just about everyone.

Please read the entire L.A. Times piece here.