It is believe that one key to living longer is lower bad (LDL) cholesterol and increasing good (HDL) cholesterol, but recent studies show that cholesterol levels that are too low could increase the chances of cancer. For the largest pharmaceutical market in the world and the companies who produce drugs there, this finding could mean that fewer people will begin using statins unless the need for them is serious.

Meanwhile researchers are worried that patients might stop using their statin-medicines and end up dying from a heart attack. Statins provide benefits like lower risk of heart attack and stroke, and evidence also suggests unexpected benefits, such as a lowered risk of death from influenza, pneumonia and the effects of smoking. Plus when patients begin to worry about cancer and stop taking their statins, drug companies start losing sales.

A recently released a study showed patients who took statin drugs and lowered cholesterol also had a higher risk of developing some cancers, although it didn't show a direct correlation that the statins themselves caused the cancer to develop. Cancer was found most frequently in patients that had lower levels of low density lipoprotein or so-called bad cholesterol when compared to patients with higher LDL levels, and also used statin medications.

Promoting the risk of cancer to those who don't need statins as a potentially life-saving therapy is creating a risk for lost profits for the largest pharmaceutical companies. Though they eventually might be shown to increase the risk of cancer, statin users who absolutely need them could overreact and stop using their medicine entirely. Educating patients of their need and possible side effects is the best way for pharmaceutical companies to keep the cholesterol market as profitable as it can be long into the future.

But, can he convince Big-Business Republican Presidential Candidates to Get Behind the Push for Universal Healthcare Coverage to Cash-In on Billions in Insurance Savings?

With immigration officially dead and off the docket (for this Congress at least), healthcare can be expected to draw alongside the war in Iraq as the major issue for the 2008 Presidential election. And, while Democrats have been pushing for a universal healthcare system since Hillary last took her swing-and-a-miss in the early years of the Clinton administration, even stranger bedfellows have been made over the ensuing 15 years as big-business Republicans join the lefty cacophony, but from their point of view, they see it as the quickest way to defray legacy healthcare costs that future, longer-living generations of retirees and low-income employees are imposing on increasingly creaky organized-labor-era business models.

Although their logic may not be as politically correct as the Democrats, adoption of single-payer universal healthcare will decrease long-term costs and boost profits for companies of all kinds but especially those with retiree legacy cost structures to deal with as well as lower-middle-class employees unable to afford health insurance on their own. Two such firms are General Motors and Wal-Mart, who will be potent allies in a business-friendly and potentially more successful bid for universal healthcare in a climate where the court of public opinion could be swayed by a movie like SiCKO!(read more)

Companies across the subsectors collectively thought of as the healthcare industry are growing more nervous as Democrats change tactics and try to reorient the debate over business models in healthcare product and service fulfillment as an us-versus-them choice - vote another Republican into the White House and greedy healthcare executives and mercenary lobbyists will join them for payback; or pick a Democrat and it'll be universal, free healthcare and drugs for everybody.

But this week, our plucky, but distant third place contestant in the run for the Democratic nomination, John Edwards, finally delivered the most detailed proposal of his vision for a universal healthcare system, even as his wife battles breast cancer. Seizing the opportunity to position for appeal between the decidedly female base of rival and heir apparent, Hillary Clinton, herself having offered up precious few new ideas (although, in case you forgot, Hillary's nascent attempts at reform during her husband's administration nearly sunk him, but at least she never admitted to being wrong in her Senate vote on going to war in Iraq) and supporters of Barack Obama, the true-left's only choice and credited with a proposal that might be smart and serious, but is still vague and unarticulated.