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Harold “Trey” Stewart III represents Maine Senate District 2, which includes communities in Aroostook and Penobscot counties. He is the Senate Republican leader and a member of the Legislative Council.
There are some losses a community can absorb without realizing what has really happened.
The hardware store closes. The neighborhood school consolidates with one 20 miles away. The church that baptized generations of families holds its final service. The downtown loses another storefront.
Each one comes with an explanation. The numbers don’t work. There aren’t enough people. Times have changed.
And then the hospital announces that babies won’t be born there anymore.
Suddenly, people notice. Because when a Maine town loses the place where its children come into the world, it is not simply losing another hospital department. It is losing a piece of its future.
That’s why what is happening in Damariscotta matters far beyond Lincoln County. MaineHealth will deliver its last babies at Lincoln Hospital on Dec. 18. Prenatal and postpartum care will stay in town; but to give birth, a mother will now drive more than 40 minutes to Brunswick.
Damariscotta is not alone. This is the 12th maternity unit to close in Maine since 2015, leaving fewer than half of the state’s 34 hospitals with maternity units. Community after community has watched the same thing happen, and hospitals cite the same reasons every time: fewer births, the struggle to recruit, and the enormous cost of keeping specialized staff on call around the clock.
For most of Maine’s existence, our small towns were places where you could build an entire life. You could grow up, go to school, find work, have your children and raise a family, and grow old there.
Sadly, that compact is quietly breaking. More bluntly, decline begins feeding decline.
Every time we lose one more essential institution, life in rural Maine gets a little harder. One more young family decides to settle somewhere else. There are fewer children, fewer workers, fewer customers, and fewer patients. And the next institution has an even harder time hanging on.
I have spent nearly a decade in the Maine Legislature watching Augusta answer similar problems the same way: Give government more power and spend more money.
Walking away from our hospitals is not the answer. They are essential institutions and major employers, and their doctors, nurses and staff deserve better than watching services disappear. But taxpayers should not keep writing larger checks for fewer local services. We can do better than blank checks or locked doors.
And Maine is about to have a rare chance to prove it. The state’s new Rural Health Transformation Program begins with roughly $190 million in federal funding, including a $30 million fund created specifically to strengthen the long-term sustainability of rural hospitals. That money should buy change, not just buy time.
When the Legislature returns, I will bring forward a plan built on three simple commitments: Protect the services a community truly cannot live without; rebuild the rural workforce that keeps those services running; and tie every taxpayer dollar to a real plan for what will be different five years from now. I will lay out exactly how in the days ahead.
Look, I’m not naïve — three bills will not reverse decades of demographic and economic change. Some services will have to evolve. Some hospitals will have to work together in ways they never have before.
And unlike what was heard during last week’s Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services Committee hearing, government cannot order young families to have more children, force doctors to move to Fort Kent or direct companies to keep services running in unsafe conditions or at a financial loss.
But we should not simply shrug while Maine becomes a place where you can visit the town your grandparents were born in and no longer have your own child there. This is about whether the Maine we inherited will still be here for the people who come after us.
A state worth growing old in must first remain a state worth being born in. That is the Maine worth fighting for.