Quote of the week

This is from Sojourners and I think it's very important:

Delaying medical care is a characteristic of poverty. For people living close to the edge, taking off a day to visit a doctor or staying home sick is literally taking food out of their mouths.

- Paul J. Gertler, a professor of economics at the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley, in response to why some in Mexico self-medicated before receiving hospital treatment for swine flu.

This is also part of why it's so terribly wrong to claim that health care coverage is each individual's "personal responsibility" (i.e. why we shouldn't have universal government financed health care.) Everyone's health is affected when those who cannot afford medical care don't receive it.