Hello,

This is a difficult piece to share, and is a bit out of the norm for me, 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 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-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.

Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg of Young Philly Politics has asked me to share with you some of my personal experience with being uninsured.

My name is Karl Martino. A few of you know me as Co-Host of Philly Future. Philly Future isn't designed to pay it's 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 a number of weeks in a row 36 hours or more. 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.