In the United States of America, health care access for persons that do not have medical insurance is limited. The impoverished cannot afford to find safe affordable housing, let alone, medical coverage. This ensures that poor Americans have less access to �luxuries� such as preventative health care measures e.g. diagnostic testing and screening for early stage cancers (Burg 1994). If diseases are left undetected until later stages several consequences arise: first, more vigorous and expensive treatments are needed; second, spread of communicable disease will be more likely, especially if persons are living in close confines; and, third, the death rate will most likely rise. Burg states that homeless children are more likely to present in emergency rooms than other poor children (1994). The fact that poor Canadians are more likely to use emergency rooms for medical services (Reutter 2000) suggests that it is not a restriction of health care insurance, as is the case in America, but a deficit in education about health and a feared stigmatization of marginalized persons by health care professionals which prevents them from accessing the preventative services which are available (even though health care professionals, by definition, should be non-judgmental).