By Becky Manley / Staff Writer
The best way to honor those who have given their lives in service to the U.S. is to make this country the best it can be.
That was how Kentucky Lt. Gov. Dr. Daniel Mongiardo opened his speech Wednesday during the monthly luncheon for the Southern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
Mongiardo said individuals can achieve community-level improvements through activities like going to church and attending public meetings.
After presenting John Surmont with a Kentucky Colonel certificate, Mongiardo apologized for not wearing a jacket.
“This has been a terrible day for me. I lost my Blackberry,” Mongiardo quipped. “So I’m a little disarranged today.”
Mongiardo then delivered a speech that touched on the same topics he discussed with supporters during his March visit to Corbin.
Although Mongiardo said he became a doctor to improve conditions at the Hazard hospital where his brother died due to lack of adequate health care, he realized the change he sought could best be accomplished through political office.
His mission is still ensuring everyone receives quality health care, Mongiardo said.
“The size of your wallet or where you live should never determine the quality of health care you get,” Mongiardo said.
Most people acknowledge that the health care system is headed for collapse without reform, but determining which reform will work best is the problem, he said.
While health legislation recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives seems to focus on insurance reform, Mongiardo said it still leaves the country paying for a “broken” and “disjointed” health care delivery system.
Fixing the delivery system will result in more efficient health care and reduce errors, Mongiardo said.
Money could be saved by eliminating medical tests that are repeated only because the original test results are lost, Mongiardo said. He added that lives could be saved by making patient information — like allergy records — easily accessible by all providers.
Leadership is needed to find the solution and to overcome protests from those people who have positioned themselves on the extreme right and left of the health care issue, he said.
“All the noise is out there, but that’s not where the answers are,” Mongiardo said.
Kentucky could serve as a role model for national health care reform partly through university research to find the best reform model, he said.
The state also needs to improve the education all its citizens receive and use all its natural resources — including coal — to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil, Mongiardo said.
Reducing that dependence would mean that the U.S. would no longer have to put its men and women serving abroad in the military in harm’s way to ensure we continue to get the oil we need.
“They’ll be home and we can start to convert some of that money to education,” Mongiardo said.
Mongiardo, a Democrat, announced in January that he would run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Jim Bunning.
Trey Grayson, the Republican Secretary of State, is seeking his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate, as is Bowling Green eye doctor Rand Paul.
