Health care coverage for working Americans is like a brittle tree in a hard wind -- and the larger limbs are beginning to snap. Between the years 2000 to 2005, 6.8 million more people became uninsured according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau's Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division. Current data estimates 46.6 million people are without health insurance coverage. As employer-based health insurance continues to fade, government programs are taking up the slack -- up to a point. But given the lack of funding, there is only so much that can be offered.

In a statement issued by the Center for American Progress, "These problems did not just happen: they resulted from flawed economic and health policies which force Americans to work more for less. When it returns after Labor Day, this Congress should act to mitigate these problems by passing a straightforward minimum wage increase and extend health funding for programs like the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Moreover, policy makers should recognize the need for major change, such as providing affordable health care to all Americans and taking action to address growing income inequality."

Some are calling for a government-based universal health care system that guarantees health care coverage for all Americans. Others are suggesting a mix of private and public health care coverage. What ever the solution, there certainly needs to be one.

We can start with a shift in perspective and change in expectation. If you are working full-time for a company, presumably your efforts are helping that company make a profit. Health insurance coverage should not be viewed as a luxury benefit, nor should the largest burden of health insurance premiums be shouldered by the employee whose earnings just meet living expenses. Yet, this is happening every day in this country. The hard wind continues to batter the brittle tree.

Personally, I am not sold on a government-run, government-backed universal health plan simply because I have covered too many horror stories about rationed care in other industrialized countries. It seems a combination of programs might be the solution but the government and our elected officials certainly need to be held accountable for implementing programs that insure all Americans.

American Public Health Association Georges Benjamin is quoted by United Press International as saying, ""This is the worst news we've had all year. Our nation is not secure if we're not healthy."

The World Cup, called by some the mother of all international soccer competitions, is held every four years. Hosted this time in Germany, national teams representing 32 countries will compete for the world championship title. World Cup fever is rising, as the first day of the tournament approaches, but the heat is not all due to the frenzied excitement of the three million fans who will attend the games. Cancer advocacy groups and health organizations are none to happy about the fact that while the FIFA will ask fans to voluntarily refrain from smoking, they will not issue a straight-out ban on smoking. According to the low-down on the reasons for the strong objection on the polite request that smokers not smoke with no legal enforcement, it is noted that cigarette lighters and ashtrays will be sold at the games. So, are they asking smokers not to smoke, but just in case they forgot their lighter or need an ashtray, smokers will be able to purchase them at the games?

The World Health Organization, WHO, signed a deal with FIFA four years ago to make the 2002 World Cup games tobacco-free in a deal it hoped would set a precedent for future tournaments. But FIFA declined to renew the agreement for the 2006 event after discussions with the German government and the local organizing committee. According to WHO, billions of people are expected to watch the televised matches around the world and they are concerned, as are all the health organizations and health advocates, that this will send the wrong message about smoking. I know I am sort of confused.

ABC News Health has just published an investigative story reporting over 25 percent of the staff at a Wisconsin school have been diagnosed with cancer and the state Department of Health has decided against investigating the high incidences of cancer at the local elementary school because they don't suspect a toxic source. I have read cancer statistics and I don't believe I have ever stumbled across a percentage that high that was considered normal -- or anything to brush off as to determining cause. Understandably, teachers, parents and students at West Elementary School are afraid and upset. In the last five years,  28 of 102 of the elementary school staff members have been diagnosed with cancer.

According to the news report, teacher Heidi Swetlik and her husband showed other teachers dirty air filters they had pulled from the school's heating and ventilation system. "This is what scares us and has scared us for quite some time," Swetlik said. According to State health officials, who ran some tests, said they found only improper chemical storage, ventilation system problems, and mold. They also said the numbers at West Elementary are not out of the ordinary. There are not out of the ordinary? In fact, they say they've investigated about 40 cancer clusters in Wisconsin and found none linked to the environment inside a building. None? Cancer Cluster 101: cancer clusters are usually linked to environmental causes.

Tom Sieger, of the Bureau of Environmental Health, is quoted as saying that statistics show cancer clusters are nothing more than coincidence, and added that proper diet and exercise are important to prevent disease. What? He needs to check with the EPA about the causes of cancer clusters. "Our information on causation of cancer is imperfect," Sieger said. "But what we do know is there are certain things we can do every day with regard to our diet, with regard to exercise." No way. He did not really say that -- did he? Yes -- yes he did. Sieger has it all figured out. It's the teachers fault they have cancer. What is going on in Wisconsin?

We have all heard the theory that a cure for cancer has already been found but it is being concealed by the cancer community who stands to lose money if the status quo shifts from treatment to cure. Most of us have spent at least a few moments contemplating the validity of this allegation. Cancer is big business, and as is the case in all big business, decisions are often made with the bottom line of profit in mind. However, the Daily Record ran a feature about Sue McLaren, a young scientist who accepted a research position with the Leukemia Research Fund to study myeloma -- a blood cancer -- that might put into perspective why the conspiracy theory doesn't have legs.

At the time of her appointment to the job, McLaren admits she knew little about myeloma. A few months into researching this cancer, her father was diagnosed with myeloma. For McLaren, what was an academic pursuit became a personal one, as she raced to find a cure for the cancer that was now killing her father. Ultimately, time was not on her side, and her father lost his life to myeloma. It is a touching story, and you can read the feature It was too late to save her beloved father here. I think McLaren's story illustrates why a cure for cancer could not be concealed for long -- if there was one already in existence. The big business of cancer and the cancer community is made up of people, and people get cancer. Or their loved ones get cancer. You are not going to agree to be part of a conspiracy that shoves you into a position of watching someone you love die from a disease -- if there is a cure. 

"On the night of my first round of chemotherapy, exactly six hours after I left the oncologist's office wondering what all the fuss was about, my stomach tumbled into my knees, my knees refused to work altogether, and I crumpled to the floor in a clammy, shivering heap.
   
I lay there until dawn, at one point vomiting on myself, at another crying that I'd rather die of cancer than undergo chemo again."

Breast cancer made me a criminal is a Boston Globe opinion piece written by Lynda Gorov -- a breast cancer patient who shares a personal account of the misery she suffered from the side effects of chemotherapy treatment and her choice to turn to the possible use of marijuana for relief. She pulls no punches and makes a good point, by way of using herself as an example, for the benefits of medical marijuana use and the ludicrous stand the government has taken to the legalities of marijuana for medical purposes. If you are sitting on the fence on this issue, or have never gone through chemotherapy and might not appreciate the grueling life-debilitating experience, her editorial is a fair one to read.

In Medical News Today, is the feature one percent reduction in cancer mortality would be worth nearly $500 billion dollars. With the ever-increasing costs of the latest in cancer drug treatments -- and what a life is worth in deciding whether or not to allow access to  drugs for cancer patients needing them -- this is an interesting and valid perspective in calculating costs of disease. According to a new study by economists Kevin Murphy and Robert Topel of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, a one percent reduction in mortality from cancer would be worth nearly $500 billion in social value of improved health and longevity. These estimates in dollars are based on the enjoyment of consumption and time during additional years of life, rather than how much a person earns.

"Since the benefits of cancer research are large, substantially greater research expenditures would be worthwhile," Murphy and Topel wrote. "A war on cancer that would spend an additional $100 billion on research and treatment may be worthwhile even if it had a one-in-five chance of reducing mortality by just one percent."

According to the researchers, from 1970 to 2000, gains in life expectancy added about $3.2 trillion per year to national wealth. While the economists are advocating in favor of additional research dollars, I believe the information from the study applies equally well when arguing if it is economically feasible to treat every cancer patient with drugs that will extend life. So for those who keep their focus on the pragmatic bottom line, and argue we simply cannot afford to treat everyone with expensive life-extending drugs, this is compelling evidence that in the long-run, you are losing money by not spending money now.

Scientists attending a cancer research conference question the realism of the prediction of a cancer cure by 2015. Back in 2003, when Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach was director of the National Cancer Institute, he announced a goal for eliminating death and suffering from cancer by 2015. Dr. von Eschenbach, who is a cancer survivor and a personal friend of the Bush family, spent 25 years at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Prominent researchers say the goal is merely a gimmick that gives patients false hope and distorts scientific reality. Others say it is simply a publicity stunt aimed at manipulating the media and public as a means to raising funds for cancer research.

Matthew Chayes, the Chicago Tribune newspaper reporter who wrote the article Cancer cure goal praised, criticized, states that a dozen cancer researchers and physicians who were interviewed during the cancer research conference, laughed off the idea that cancer deaths and suffering could be eliminated by 2015. They were not willing to be quoted directly, or go on the record with any remarks because they feared reprisal from the head of a federal agency that controls the purse strings for cancer research. Common sense should rule when it comes to proclamations made by the government, especially when such lofty goals are announced, but still, it seems especially heartless to raise hopes for the motivating purpose of raising money.

Last week, I posted on the power behind the power of prayer regarding a study basically suggesting that prayer does not help people heal, and to make matters worse, prayer seems to inadvertently act with evil-eye power, making those prayed for suffer more difficult recovery than their counterparts who were not prayed for at all. But if prayer can have a negative affect on the health of someone prayed for, then it must have the power to heal too. Yes? Yes. As Nietzsche once pointed out, good and bad cannot, and do not, travel separately, as each is merely a side to a two-sided coin. So if the study is suggesting prayer does not have any power to heal, it cancels out its conclusions by suggesting that prayer does have the power to harm. All this study provides is a reference for those who believe there is nothing beyond life but what we experience in a skin-and-bones existence, much the same as a religious text is used by those to support their take on ultimate truth. You would think we could learn to agree to disagree, because, dare I suggest, each of us is partly right and none of us owns the exclusive rights to reality and truth. But then again, what good is that perspective when it comes to pissing contests or the impassioned discourse that fuels the religious and scientifically political punditry.

In a Slate article, The Deity in the Data by William Saletan, the author asserts that the researchers of the study, many media outlets and clerics are shrugging off the study findings because the findings did not go the way most expected, or wanted. The study "cannot address a large number of religious questions, such as whether God exists, whether God answers intercessory prayers, or whether prayers from one religious group work in the same way as prayers from other groups." To that, Saletan says bull. He presents some interesting, and entertaining, perspectives of his own. I do not think anyone is shrugging. As I see it, the power of prayer was not the real focus of the study, but whether or not God can be proven as real. Quite a task, and an unneeded one. Those who believe in the power of their God, believe in the power of their prayers. For those who do not believe, there is nothing to prove, is there? It is my guess that the researchers might not have received the same level of funding by stating the obvious hypothesis.

Next Wednesday, Berkeley College Republicans will host Dunk a Republican to raise funds for breast cancer research. Berkeley College Republicans president Josiah Prendergast, vice president Amaris White, and Melanie Smith, editor of the campus conservative monthly California Patriot, will take turns in the tank. All proceeds go to the American Cancer Society.

It's a bi-partisan event. Other event supporters are the Associated Students of the University and the Cal Berkeley Democrats. Of course, there is the element of political barbs, as when Scott Lucas, Cal Berkeley Democrats president says that he is looking forward to dunking his counterpart Republicans on Wednesday as much as he will be come next November's election. All in good fun, all for a good cause.