My friend Karl, who has done so much to support the local blogosphere, wrote this piece in support of Gov. Ed Rendell’s healthcare plan, and I wanted to share it with you as part of SG’s continuing series on class issues. It’s long, but every word is worth reading:

This piece about being uninsured was posted
to Philly Future and Young Philly Politics. Susan has asked me to do the same here for this important series that shares political viewpoints that aren’t part of popular political discourse. So here it is, with additional detail and background. It is a difficult piece for me to share, so apologies if it rambles a bit.

A few months ago, on my way home from a physical rehabilitation session for my herniated disk and spondylolisthesis, I fell down some steps on the way to the regional rail station and fractured my right foot.

All of the next day, especially upon learning that the fracture was minor, I laughed at my predicament. The irony of it. Oh I was in pain, be sure of that. A whole hell of a lot of it. I still am. But I could laugh because just over ten years earlier, I would not have had health insurance - and my situation would be considerably more dire.

My name is Karl Martino. A few of you know me as co-host of Philly Future. Philly Future isn’t designed to pay its bills, it’s a labor of love, so by day I work as a software engineer for a great employer, where I have health insurance as a benefit.

As I mentioned, just a short time ago, I would not be looking at my predicament and be considering myself so blessed. I was working a string of part-time jobs that either did not offer benefits, or gave benefits to those who worked full-time - a status reached when you worked 36 hours or more a number of weeks in a row. Employers would never let me work the required hours for those number of weeks straight. This kept benefits tantalizingly out of reach. It went like this for approximately six years.

Six years without a dental visit. Six years where the emergency room would be my source of primary care. Six years between the day I was thrown out of my mother’s home and had worked my way to a place that could be considered “middle-class”.

As a teenager, I made the difficult decision to quit high school and find work. My home situation was tenuous, constant fights with my stepfather led me to feel as if I did not know if I would have a home to sleep in one day from the next. I needed money just in case.

Our family was low-income and had moved every few years. I had no one I could talk to I felt could help. No safety net of friends or family that had been built up to rely on. And making this decision would put me out of the reach of counselors or advisers.

One day in my late teens, I was thrown out. From there, I would journey from nights from sleeping in a squat, to nights sleeping on the Frankford El. Along the way, I took whatever work I could find. The best at the time for an uneducated kid was cashier work or telemarketing.

Job to job. Day by day. Along the way, I made some terrible decisions, the kind you make when you don’t know if you have a future. Life was raw and on the edge, not having rent, sometimes transportation, and even food, regular concerns.

At my last telemarketing gig, I had some measure of success and stability. I worked my way up to a supervisor’s position. I was 19.

It went horribly wrong. I was far too young to have so much
responsibility over others, so when a data entry position opened up, I took the decrease in pay for the opportunity to teach myself software engineering. The beginnings of my career.

Looking back, I realize how truly blessed I was. I had no serious
health issues to address. I had no family to take care of. If I had either, I could not consume myself with my work as I did. How do single mothers and single fathers, fighting every day at jobs that barely pay the bills do it? Their choices are far more stark then mine ever were.

In addition, it’s hard to over emphasize this - it was the 90s. It
seems so long ago now, and it is hard to recall, but it was a time of great opportunity. A time where employers, unburdened with the environment of fear we live in today, might take a chance on a hard worker and help that person get a leg up. An environment where millions of people could succeed in their struggle against the cycle of poverty. People took a chance on me time and again. And a few along the way became mentors. Became friends. Became family.

It’s difficult to speak about my past, but I recognize I have a
responsibility to my community to do so.

Responsibility is a tricky word. We live in an age of ‘me’ where our responsibilities to each other have been subsumed by those
responsibilities we have to ourselves.

Governor Rendell’s health care plan may offer us an opportunity.

An opportunity to insure that no child need go without a preventive medical visit and end up in a costly emergency room visit. An opportunity to make our state an example that others will want to follow, one that will make us more attractive to employers and homemakers alike. An opportunity to insure that working class people, people who want to provide a healthy home for their families, people who want to climb up the ladder of our American dream, have the tools to do so.

We have an opportunity, an opportunity to live up to our
responsibility to each other.