Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. The author of four books, his new study of the Ken Curtis administration is due next year. He welcomes comment at [email protected].

Before the federal shutdown fades from view, we must focus on what happened and what it means for battles still ahead.

First and most obviously, it didn’t work — most shutdowns don’t. For three decades, it’s been a Republican tactic to diminish the abilities of government and respect the people have for it.

Nevertheless, Democrats decided to try it, in the absence of any resistance to President Trump’s
overreach from Republicans in Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court.

There are two important lessons to be learned here, one about policy and another about politics.
On policy, Democrats dramatically brought to the fore our health care crisis in a way not seen
since the Affordable Care Act was painfully enacted in 2010.

As occasionally happens, both sides are right.

Republicans are correct that subsidies needed to continue the ACA, for Medicaid and private insurance, are becoming insupportable. But the GOP has no plan to bring costs under control while keeping Americans insured.

Democrats are correct that we can’t go back to when millions had no coverage and visited emergency rooms in desperation — driving up costs and worsening our national health. What neither side has is a solution.

The answer is before us now as it’s always been. We need a national health care system, organized and directed by government, just like every other developed country. American health care is unique in costing  far more than any other system while delivering decidedly substandard health outcomes — not a distinction to be proud of.

We’ve tried half-measures for 60 years. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson thought we could forego a national system, such as those developing in Canada and Europe, by covering the poor through Medicaid and the retired through Medicare.

Sen. Ted Kennedy had a national plan ready when Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 with commanding Democratic majorities — two-thirds in the House, 61 Senate seats. But Carter, a businessman, was unsympathetic and the opportunity was lost.

 After the collapse of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s health care plan in 1994, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell thought he could get bipartisan agreement on mandates for private coverage. He couldn’t.

Finally, Barack Obama arrived in 2009 with similarly huge Democratic majorities and a commitment to maintaining private insurance. We got the Affordable Care Act, but in a lackluster version because Ted Kennedy died and with him the filibuster-proof majority.

Today, American health care is almost entirely privatized, with inadequate regulation at all levels, especially for prescription drugs. Enormous revenue streams are misused in the quest for “efficiency,” cutting birthing centers and emergency rooms, consolidating hospitals and creating large practices where few see their own doctor.

None of this will change until we make it change. Powerful private interests will see to that unless the people demand a new, fairer, more equitable and more effective — not “efficient” — system.

This is the political lesson: First, Chuck Schumer is done as Democrats’ Senate leader; he should plan his exit as Speaker Nancy Pelosi did in 2020.

Whether Republicans would have cracked is irrelevant. When you adopt a strategy of resistance, as Schumer did, you can’t cave in, allowing your caucus to drift away without attaining the goal, continued ACA subsidies — especially after winning an election hands-down.

Democrats must set their goal as winning Congress in 2026 and the White House in 2028 with new, younger, more vigorous leadership pragmatic enough to devise a health care plan that goes beyond slogans and will actually work.

As much as I’d like to think otherwise, Republicans will never devise a plan to provide health care to all Americans at reasonable costs. When Mitchell pursued his doomed plan in 1994, some of his aides dissented. One told me, “Republicans never vote for health care,” and it’s true. They never do.

Now, the situation is more dire. As the New York Times said during the 2016 campaign, Trump executed a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. As of the 2024 election, the GOP is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Inc.

It’s a huge opportunity, if we will embrace it. Across the country, and not just among Democrats, voters hunger for change. They don’t want the same old script that involves 80-somethings running just because they’ve been there before.

It’s not just about age, but attitude. This is a rich, powerful, prosperous nation poorly deploying its vast resources for the public good.

Voters know that, and are responding. Candidates who understand that will be chosen to lead the people, as long as they also understand who their boss is. In a democratic republic, it can be no other way.