According to Thomas Sowell, in a recent Baltimore Sun opinion piece, the "biggest of the big lies in the health care hype is that a lack of insurance means a lack of medical care." Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Stanford think tank. He then mentions how he paid for his own broken arm and jaw when he didn't have insurance when he was young.

Sowell also writes that "few people show the slightest interest in what has happened in countries with government-controlled medical care." He cites waiting lists in such countries while people in America are just "picking up a phone and making an appointment."

Sowell is right. You can just pick up a phone and make a doctor's appointment here in the U.S.

Paying for it, well, that's not quite as easy.

A recent opinion piece in the Boston Globe by Laurence J. Kotlikoff relates his experience at a recent conference where the keynote speaker was former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Her topic was the healthcare crisis and her message was personal,according to Kotlikoff:

The gist was that even she lives in constant fear of major uninsured health bills. Not her own -- those of her son. He can't afford insurance because his son -- her grandchild -- has a preexisting condition.

As I listened, a light dawned: O'Connor and the rest of us with health coverage are also uninsured. We too face terrible, albeit more remote, healthcare risks -- the risk that our employer will drop our plan, that Medicare will go bust, that our plan won't cover our needs, that premiums will eat us alive, that our doctor will stop taking our insurance, that long-term care will wipe us out, and that our uninsured friends and family members will need major financial help.

For the rest of this piece, including Kotlikoff's opinion on possible solutions, please see here.

With next year's presidential election still over a year away, candidate hopefuls are cranking up the heat on health issues and the stances being taken. Seeing as cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the U.S., it is sure to take front stage quite a bit between now and late next year.

In the latest edition, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee have joined Senator John Edwards in stating publicly that they intend to fight cancer with increased funding and research.

One of the largest and most viewable aspects of cancer topics -- cigarette smoking -- has these men taking different opinions on what steps should be taken to curb smoking. Huckabee supports a nationwide smoking ban, while Brownback supports control by local communities. Which is better in your opinion?

It used to be that Mononucleosis was known as the Kissing Disease. We were warned not to play spin the bottle because we could end up missing school from mono, though that was a desirable prospect to some students and we were sure to make a full recovery in a few months. But these days, kissing can lead to so much more than just mono -- this article suggests that HPV can be transmitted simply by kissing, although it's more likely to be spread through oral sex, and this can lead to cancer. Another cause of the rising numbers of cancer? It's thought that smoking cannabis is to blame for some oral cancers, although this is unsubstantiated.

What do you think -- is HPV really a 'kissing' disease?

Last week, The New York Times editorial page asked if the United States really has the best healthcare system in the world. The editors agree that at the top medical centers that is probably true, while addressing the fact that the U.S. healthcare system lags behind according to many studies, including a recent one by the Commonwealth Fund.

On the cancer front, according to the report, the U.S. has done a good job on reducing smoking when compared to other countries, but we still have a lot of work to do regarding obesity . We do rank high on preventative care, like Pap screens and mammograms.

When compared to Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the U.S. had the best survival rate for breast cancer, second best for cervical cancer and childhood leukemia and almost-worst for colorectal cancer.

The editorial page concludes that we have to get past this idea that we have "the best health care system in the world" if we are to fix its deficits including reducing the number of uninsured. For the full editorial, please see here.

Professor Richard Dawkins, writer and biologist, says that "we live in dangerous times when superstition is gaining ground and rational science is under attack."

We have all heard the conspiracy theories about how the scientific community and our health care professionals want to hide the cure for cancer in order to make money. They don't want a cure, they say. Isn't that just a bit ridiculous when all of the people in those industries most certainly knows or loves someone who has gone through a cancer diagnosis. Does that make any sense?

The professor also says that "There are two ways of looking at the world - through faith and superstition, or through the rigours of logic, observation and evidence, through reason".

There were many letters to the editor last week about the New York Times feature piece on cancer. One struck me as particularly interesting.

Abraham R. Liboff, an emeritus professor of physics at Oakland University, questions why the "war on cancer" is taking so long, after three decades of research that is costing billions of dollars per year. He writes:

The terrible confusion for cancer patients, the need to search out the right physician, the multiplicity of treatment decisions and the requirement that one must deal with a variety of specialists - all these difficulties stem from the unspoken fact that medicine still does not have a firm understanding of the underlying basis for cancer ...

As a physical scientist with a background in medicine, I sense there is something very misdirected in all of the current research in the war on cancer, whether it involves oncologists, molecular biologists, pharmacologists, radiotherapists or surgeons. This array of talent apparently does not cut the mustard ...

A new perspective on cancer is urgently needed, along with better generals to fight this disease.

As a fellow scientist who has worked in biomedical research, my response to this question is that cancer is just that complicated. While we must continue to work on understanding the basics of the cell, at the same time, we also need to continue coming at cancer from all angles.

Why do you think the "war on cancer" taking so long to win?

Do you trust your doctor? I do--with a bit of hestitation though. After my dad's death, we realized that his doctor had been grossly negligent in treating him--my dad had dozens of appointments where he complained of his failing health and asked his doctor to put him through tests to figure out what was wrong with him. His doctor's solution was to not screen him for anything and instead telling him it was just age catching up with him and prescribing him 600 heavy-duty painkillers to mask the pain he experienced while he was slowly dying. My dad trusted his doctor to look out for him and paid for it with his life.

Though I'm wary, most people do trust their doctors--more than any other professional they deal with in fact, a study shows. Not surprisingly, lawyers and politicians are the least-trusted. What do you think about these results? Are we right to trust out doctors? Or should we be taking more responsibility for our health and not relying on a virtual stranger to look out for our best interests?

The latest edition of People Magazine has an interview with Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney's wife Ann. While she writes about being diagnosed with MS, she remarks, ' I thought, 'Couldn't I just have cancer and die?' Her remarks are raising some eyebrows among cancer specialists and survivors, including Leroy Sievers, who writes this powerful response, and I can see why.

Since when did cancer become a quick way to die? Cancer is something the goes on for years, that slowly destroys your body and chips away at your spirit piece by piece. During my dad's time with cancer, he was depressed, constantly ill and in pain and unable to eat more than a bit of soup every day. He needed major amounts of pain medication just to get through the day. He tried to enjoy his last few months with his family but he couldn't because he was too sick to do anything. And while I'm sure MS isn't a walk in the park either, does that sound like a more desirable illness? Hardly.

What are your thoughts on this?

It's been said that a positive outlook on life in general when diagnosed with cancer makes the days pass by more easily. Some have even ascribed a daily positive outlook on helping them beat cancer into remission.

Support groups and other ways to help cancer patients see the bright part of each day (regardless of how dark it is) may not end up having any effect on the cancer's progression or outcome, reveals a new in-depth study.

After reading the specifics of the study, I'm still of the mind that not mentally succumbing to the daily travails of cancer (and related treatments) is one of the best prescriptions known to the human race. All the medicine and technology in the world can't be beat by knowing that every day is a gift. And, when it's over, it's just that time. We'll all be there at some point.

Until then, take a page from my late grandmother's book - she never complained a single bit and was as happy as could be until her day of passing from ovarian cancer-related treatment. And that's how I'll always remember her.

Barbara Ehrenreich, author, political activist and breast cancer survivor, writes on the "Blame the cancer patient" mentality this week on her blog in a piece titled, "What Causes Cancer: Probably Not You."

Ehrenreich writes about the new study that came out last week about fruits and vegetables not preventing the recurrence of breast cancer:

The perennial temptation to blame disease on sin or at least some grave moral failing just took another hit. A major new study shows that women on a virtuous low fat diet with an extraordinary abundance of fruits and veggies were no less likely to die of breast cancer than women who grazed more freely.

Ehrenreich also criticizes the positive psychology movement, where any health setback can be conquered with optimism, writing that the science here is "shaky at best."

Ehrenreich concludes that "optimism, especially about the validity of the conventional wisdom, can be hazardous. What you need is a narrow-eyed, deeply skeptical attitude."

Do delays in diagnosing kids with various types of cancer have anything to do with the actual outcomes of each specific situation? New research concludes that there is very little evidence to connect early pediatric cancer diagnosis with what impacts eventually happen in these kids. Once malignancies happen, they expand more rapidly in kids than adults.

Until there are clear answers (if ever), what can parents do to try and quash the environmental contributors to cancer? Staying away from carcinogens, cancer-causing and processed foods, food additives and other dangerous items is a great start -- but it's a very hard one.

Unless you live an extremely healthy and organic lifestyle in a mud house on a mountaintop, you're going to be exposed to cancer-causing agents all the time (hopefully in small amounts).

If there is a silver lining here, it's that cancer in children is rare -- affecting about 10,000 kids in the U.S. annually. Still, that is no comfort to parents with children afflicted by cancer.

What does it take to prevent a person from buying a pack of smokes? It doesn't seem that banning cigarette commercials from television has done the job. Nor does it appear that ending the reign of ads like Joe the Camel has deterred younger people from taking up the habit. Could it be that slapping higher taxes on cigarettes makes a difference?

Currently 43 states have implemented a higher cigarette tax since 2002. The average amount of taxes went from just $0.43 per pack to $1.07. With every increase states have seen a decrease in younger people buying smokes. The higher taxes are giving the participating states more revenue to channel into health care a smoking prevention programs.

Just think if cigarette taxes were raised a bit more. What then? Fewer kids buying smokes and more revenue for health care? Sounds like a good thought to me.

The city I live in recently banned smoking. I, along with many other people, breathed a huge sigh of relief when the ban was implemented (literally!) because it sometimes seemed downright impossible to have a social life in a city where smoking was allowed in almost all restaurants and bars. I recall an argument I had with someone who was upset because not being allowed to smoke in a public place was unconstitutional -- it was his right to smoke wherever he pleased and if people don't like it, they shouldn't go out. Ever.

What about the right to live and to work in an environment where you're not putting yourself in grave danger? Everyone has the right to a safe work environment, including bar and restaurant staff. And make no mistake--second hand smoke is toxic. According to this report, bar and restaurant workers showed an alarming amount of carcinogenic material in their urine after being exposed to smoke for only minutes.

So I say, if you want to smoke, smoke. Just don't poison everyone else while you're at it. Your thoughts?