Newly released research suggests that the rising cost of cancer treatments may cause some patients to turn down the care they need. According to the analysis, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, from 1990 to 2008, cancer care costs increased from $27 billion to $90 billion as new drugs were created and less invasive procedures discovered. Researchers agree that a great deal of the cost increase can be traced to financial incentives to doctors who prescribe more expensive drugs. Due to rising costs and increasing number of eligible patients, charities such as the American Cancer Society are able to help less people. In the past, the ACS could help one in five people with the medical bills. Today, they can only help one in six.

For cellphone users, not talking is costly too as a study shows many customers pay for much more time than they use

If you’re like most cellphone users, you probably think you’re paying less than 10 cents per minute for calls. Think again.

When you do the math, you find the average cellphone customer actually pays more than $3 per minute, according to a report being issued this week by the Utility Consumers’ Action Network, a San Diego consumer advocacy group.

Researchers arrived at the average $3.02-per-minute charge by comparing the average number of minutes charged in more than 700 San Diego consumers’ telecom bills and dividing by the average number of actual minutes used.

That $3-per-minute figure is skewed by the relatively small percentage of people who pay for a lot of minutes but barely use any. But even when those folk are taken out of the mix, most wireless customers still pay between 50 cents and $1 per minute, the study found.

Among other findings in the report:

* Only about 8% of land line customers pay less than 10 cents per minute for long-distance calls. The majority pay well over 10 cents per minute, with 20% of people paying more than 50 cents per minute and 10% paying more than $1.

* The cost of additional phone services has soared. In AT&T’s case, the cost of call waiting has risen 86% since 2004, the cost of an unlisted number is up 346% and the cost of directory assistance has skyrocketed 1,630%.

* The average cellphone customer uses only about a third of “any time minutes” allowed by most wireless plans. The rest are paid for but wasted.

Many of the findings — particularly the average cost per minute of wireless service — have been speculated about for years by telecom observers. The report represents one of the first attempts to quantify costs based on a relatively broad sample of customers.

Bottom line: Most telecom customers are buying more product than they use, and that’s pure gravy for service providers.

The trick, of course, is that consumers have to be proactive in tracking the number of minutes used each month and shopping around for the most suitable plan. The study found that most people don’t take the time to look closely at their telecom bills.

For that matter, the study found that most bills were written and formatted so opaquely that even when customers tried to decipher their statements, they often couldn’t make heads or tails out of what they were being charged for.

Many patients are finding that a co-pay is no longer sufficient to visit the doctorâ??s office. In a new trend, offices are asking for full payments up to the deductible amounts, often before the patient can see the doctor. An industry analyst says that as insurance companies and employers have started requiring consumers to pay more of the costs of care, doctorsâ?? offices have shifted their fee recovery to consumers

According to a recently released poll, conducted by Associated Press-GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media, actually found that an astonishing 32% of those surveyed are confident that they are secure in their jobs.

How can anyone today feel safe? Many industries — automobile manufacturing, media, the retail sector, financial services and construction to name a few — are in free fall. And now even technology giants such as National Semiconductor and Dell have begun laying people off. So has that symbol of all symbols, Microsoft, which recently announced the first major layoff in the company’s history.

And it all trickles down. As computer programmers cut back on their lattes, Starbucks workers lose their jobs. And as taxes shrink, governments contract, which means that tiny branches of local libraries are laying off people too — despite the fact that, in many communities, libraries have emerged as gathering spots for unemployed people of all ages and at all stages in their careers.

The official U.S. unemployment rate is 7.6% and growing, and the actual rate is probably closer to 14% if you include people so discouraged that they’ve quit looking or taken part-time jobs because that’s all they could find. Other surveys have found that most Americans have friends or family members who have been laid off in the last six months. So it’s hard to look at the one-third of Americans who remain optimistic and not conclude they’re nuts.

In the global marketplace, mass firings have become the knee-jerk reaction to whatever bad news comes along. As defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a mass layoff occurs when at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance are filed by the former employees of a single establishment during a five-week period. During December 2008 alone, there were, by those standards, 2,275 mass-layoff “events” nationwide, down slightly from November’s record high of 2,333. As a point of comparison, there were “just” 1,352 mass layoffs in November 2007 and 1,469 the following month.

The bureau also reports on what it calls “extended” mass layoffs, which is what happens when private-sector nonfarm employers report that 50 or more employees have remained out of work for at least 31 days. During the fourth quarter of 2008, 3,140 extended mass layoffs left 508,859 people “separated” from their jobs. The construction and manufacturing sectors hit highs for extended mass layoffs, and so did eight states, including California.