Dr. Ogan Gurel
To highlight the hardships that plague the uninsured, Chicago docter Ogan Gurel is taking their stories to Washington, D.C. — on foot. Gurel is adjunct associate professor of bioengineering/bioinformatics at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and chairman of Aesis Group, a medical consulting firm. As a self-employed consultant, the doctor, like nearly 50 million other Americans, lacks health insurance. Inspired by the 167-mile walk around Illinois that Pat Quinn (now governor of Illinois) and Physicians for a National Health Program founder Dr. Quentin Young took in August 2001 to promote health care for everyone, Gurel is on a one-man march to the nation's capital.
On Saturday, June 27, he left from Daley Plaza on a nearly 700-mile hike. He expects to arrive in Washington on July 27. En route, he plans to meet people and share their health-care stories through his blog, Facebook and Twitter.
In his walk, which Gurel says is nonpolitical, he isn't advocating any particular reform policy, he says. That's a pity, because it makes his walk less meaningful. It's clear that some kind of health-care reform will happen. Yet unless we have, at a minimum, a strong public option, it will fall far short of health care for all.
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