I started hearing more cancer announcements than birth announcements this year.

There have been a succession of people -- co-workers, dear friends, high school and college mates -- who have shared their life-changing diagnoses recently. It makes sense as part of getting older, but I hadn’t expected it.

I couldn’t talk when my younger sister told me her husband had been diagnosed with lymphoma. I cried on my way to work that morning, but made sure my voice was encouraging when I spoke to her later.

Like most people, upon getting word of someone’s illness, I’ll send a card or drop off a meal, ask for updates and be as positive as possible. And, of course, I’ll pray.

This is what we do in America when someone gets really sick or hurt: pray for their healing and for good health insurance coverage. Because unlike every other developed, wealthy country in the world, it’s a gamble when someone in your family needs medical treatment here. Are you lucky enough to have adequate insurance? Or will trying to save your loved one’s life bankrupt your family?

Our complicated, inefficient and morally suspect system of health care is well-known. The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other country in the world. And yet, 30 countries have longer life expectancies than ours. We are the only country in the world that has the means to cover every resident, but that has decided every person doesn’t deserve health care. We have the highest rate of people dying from preventable diseases among similar countries. In 2013, more people died in the United States from preventable diseases or complications than those in 12 other high-income countries, according to data from the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.

When you get a little older, you don’t just hear statistics in health care debates. You see the faces of people you love who are living with chronic diseases and those who are fighting to get healthy.

Politicians have been trying to fix our system for years. But the underlying value shouldn’t be a partisan issue at all. We should start from the basic assumption that every American is worthy of care, and that it shouldn’t bankrupt them. What could be more pro-life than making sure people can afford medical treatment when they are sick? What could be a greater commitment to family values than making sure parents can take a sick baby to a doctor? Who would tell a gravely ill member of their family that they didn’t deserve medicine or care?

No one would.

A civilized society takes care of its sick. Partly because every adult knows it could be them next time. It could be your child, your parent.

This past year, we watched disabled activists protest in wheelchairs to save health care coverage. We saw a late-night comedian cry while telling us about the medical procedures that saved his newborn’s life, begging Congress to ensure all babies get the same fighting chance. Millions of Americans called their representatives relentlessly, groveling for their lives, asking that basic protections like not getting dropped for a “pre-existing condition” stayed part of the law.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in October that will impact millions with pre-existing conditions. Soon after, 18 patient organizations, including the Arthritis Foundation and the American Heart Association, issued a joint statement.

“This order has the potential to price millions of people with pre-existing conditions and serious illnesses out of the individual insurance market and put millions more at risk through the sale of insurance plans that won’t cover all the services patients want to stay healthy, or the critical care they need when they get sick,” read the statement.

And now, the Senate is considering a tax bill that also has major implications for health care coverage impacting millions of us. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office expects everyone’s insurance to cost 10 percent more if the Senate GOP is successful. The House already passed a version of the tax bill in which Americans who have serious chronic conditions or pay for nursing home care or high-cost medications can no longer deduct medical expenses.

Meanwhile, we read about people like Alec Raeshawn Smith, a 26-year-old who started to ration his insulin after he aged out of his parents’ health insurance. He died in June. And like Shane Patrick Boyle, who started a GoFundMe campaign in February to raise money for “a month of insulin.” A few weeks later, he died after developing diabetic ketoacidosis.

Boyle’s family shared this post on a GoFundMe appeal to raise money for his memorial service:

“My cousin, Shane Boyle, put everything into taking care of his ailing mother at the expense of his own needs. Shane’s mother, Judy Boyle, passed away on March 11th and we lost Shane to diabetes exactly a week later on March 18th. After his death, we learned that Shane lost his prescription benefits when he moved to Mena, Arkansas to care for his mom. We found a GoFundMe where he was trying to raise $750 to get just one more month of insulin and supplies.

“Unfortunately, he didn’t get help in time. Shane died because he was trying to stretch out his life-saving insulin to make it last longer.”

In America, we have people begging for insulin.

And we pray.

It’s so hard for some people to do nothing for six minutes, they would rather fail a school assignment, cheat on it or literally shock themselves.

Those are the startling results from a six-minute challenge issued by a professor for the past three years. Tim Bono, a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, teaches a class on positive psychology to about 300 upperclassmen. The assignment was inspired by a study published in Science in 2014 about an experiment at the University of Virginia.

Bono gives his students these simple instructions:

Find a quiet space and entertain yourself with thoughts of something pleasant for six minutes. Put away any distractions such as your computer or phone, turn off the TV or radio, and sit in silence for six minutes (set an alarm), occupying yourself only with the thoughts in your head. You may think about anything you wish (going on a hike, having dinner at your favorite restaurant, being on vacation, etc.).

There are only two rules: Remain seated. Stay awake.

In the past three years that Bono has given this task, he found:

-- Only 67 percent were able to complete the assignment and follow both rules the entire time.

-- Among those who were able to do so, the majority (56 percent) reported that it was at least somewhat difficult to concentrate.

-- Among the one-third who couldn’t do it, the most common distraction was their phones. More than 30 percent of this group had to check their phones at least once. In a six-minute period.

-- Some described the activity as “particularly tough,” “a real hassle,” and “extremely hard.”

Remember, the assignment is to sit and literally do nothing. And these are among the top students in the country.

One student even admitted how such a short span of time feels completely different in another context.

“At first I kept wanting to check my phone, and a few times I thought, ‘This is pointless, I’m wasting my time,’” the student wrote. “I kept thinking how hard it was to sit and just think for six minutes. Then I realized that anytime I get worried about the future or stressed about an upcoming event, I often spend much more than six minutes singularly focused on worrying about that event.”

In the original experiment, lead researcher Tim Wilson found that some subjects would even resort to administering electric shocks on themselves to simply be doing something.

Participants were wired and given the opportunity to shock themselves during the thinking period. All of them had already had a chance to try out the device. Among those who said they would pay money not to feel the shock again, a quarter of the women and two-thirds of the men gave themselves a shock during the short thinking period.

Also among the test subjects, 32 percent admitted to cheating by using their phones, listening to music, or doing anything but just sitting there.

Imagine how quickly six minutes disappears when scrolling through social media or watching a mindless television show. Why would some of us literally choose pain over a few minutes of being alone with our thoughts? Wilson suggested that mammals evolved to monitor their environments for dangers and opportunities, which makes focusing just internally for several minutes unnatural and difficult.

We are wired for distraction, it seems.

Bono says the assignment helps his students understand this automatic, natural tendency of our minds to disengage with tasks requiring focused attention and seek stimulation elsewhere. It makes sense why we feel the urge to check our email, Facebook or text messages when we start working on a project or studying for an exam. The ability to override this impulse and focus is a valuable skill, and research suggests it can be developed over time with practice.

“By strengthening our attentional muscles, it allows us to identify when our mind is wandering and bring it back to the task at hand,” Bono said. The interruptions that feel good in the short-term are at odds with what is good for us in the long term, he explained.

Try the six-minute experiment yourself, and ask your children to attempt it.

The results may be shocking.

It was a heavy question to ask the group.

“Imagine you are ‘the man’ in your hometown, and you get kidnapped and taken to become a slave. How would you feel?” Shawn Filer, 18, asked.

“I’d be angry,” one of the boys said.

A moment later, another boy jumped up and broke into smooth dance moves in the middle of the circle that was talking about “The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano.”

Filer smiled at Corion Henderson, 12, who had popped up a few times to show off his moves. This is how the discussion flows in this book club for tween boys that meets monthly in a converted fire station in Ferguson, Missouri.

The club’s founder, 11-year-old Sidney Keys III, is a wiry kid in glasses whose voice cracks occasionally while leading the meet-ups with the help of a “big bro” volunteer who keeps the group in check. On this Sunday in September, they are all wearing gray T-shirts that say “Cool Bros Read.”

More than a year ago, Sidney went viral in a Facebook Live video that his mom posted. It showed him engrossed in a book at EyeSeeMe, a St. Louis bookstore that focuses on books featuring African-American characters, culture and figures. Winnie Caldwell, Sidney’s mom, had planned a surprise trip for her son to the store as soon as she heard about it.

“I just wanted him to be able to see books with characters who look like him,” she said. Caldwell, 28, an entrepreneur and social media maven, had recently come back from a blogging conference where she attended a session on Facebook Live strategies. She was so impressed by the bookstore, she figured it was worth sharing and decided to try out the technology. She live-streamed a six-minute video of Sidney reading on the floor and gave a tour of the store. The video ended up being viewed 65,000 times.

“If I had known it was going to go viral, I would have put on some makeup,” Caldwell laughs.

She talked to store owner Pamela Blair about how to build on the momentum to encourage literacy among children. She and Sidney talked about a book club for boys his age.

“I said something corny, like ‘book club for boys,’ and he was like, ‘no,’” she said.

“I came up with Books and Bros,” Sidney said. Caldwell created a website within a few weeks and started promoting the idea on her Facebook, Instagram and blog.

When they launched, any boy between the ages of 8 and 12 could sign up for $20 a month to receive the monthly book selection with a curriculum she designed, a snack and small prize, along with an invitation to a meet-up. They’ve got nearly 60 boys signed up so far, and about 10 live outside the St. Louis area. (Now, the membership is $25). Blair typically suggests a few titles for Sidney to consider, and he goes to the store to peruse each book before deciding.

He looks for action-packed books that hook him from the start.

“I don’t like books that take a long time to figure out,” he said. Once, he stayed in the bookstore until he got to chapter five of a possible pick, while his mother waited.

“I can’t leave yet,” he said. “I have to figure out if I like this book.”

Sidney’s book club idea and his mom’s video attracted national attention, and even got a shout-out in O, The Oprah Magazine. Sidney said the visit to EyeSeeMe made him realize how few books in his school library featured African-American characters.

That’s exactly why Filer, a St. Louis-area high school graduate headed to Stanford University, decided to get involved.

“They are not going to read about kidnapped African princes in school,” he said. Boys read at lower rates than girls, and one way to counteract that is by keeping them engaged and connected to the content. The 2016 Kids and Family Reading Report by Scholastic found that boys trail girls in reading outside of school assignments. A larger percentage of boys (45 percent) say they struggle to find books they like.

The book club has done more than just bring together boys who like to read.

It’s given them a different way to imagine their own stories.