The coolest kid in my neighborhood was never the same kid from day to day. The title went to the kid with the neatest stuff that day (a new way to blow something up), or the best idea for a new activity (riding your bike down a hill at breakneck speed and launching yourself off a ramp into a pond).

The kids who were the coolest most often were those who knew where the interests and needs of the crowd were going and then led them there. That is why some of us ate unimaginable things like worms, and another climbed two stories up the face of a building to remove the “B” from a “Bass for Governor” campaign banner one chilly October evening.

Among Maine’s current political leaders are several who are becoming politically cool by staking out leadership positions on health care issues, and could have ruled as cool in my neighborhood had they grown up there. They are becoming the doctors of health care politics in this state, and are poised to stake their political futures on the hot issues of health care. (It is noteworthy that there are no real physicians among the leaders of health care politics in Maine.)

The coolest one of them all at the moment has got to be Chellie Pingree, the former Maine Senate Majority Leader from North Haven, a town small enough that if it was a lobster you would have to throw it back. Pingree was one of the two principal authors of the Maine Rx program, which is a Maine law designed to cut prescription drug prices for Maine citizens without prescription drug insurance.

The chances the law will see the light of day and boost Pingree to national prominence were launched into orbit recently when the U.S. Court of Appeals tanked an injunction against Maine Rx implementation. (Pharmaceutical companies have sued to get the law overturned.) Pingree recently announced that she will run for the U.S. Senate. She will certainly use the Maine Rx two-by-four that she smacked the drug companies with as a central plank in her campaign against Sen. Susan Collins. The thought of Pingree in the Senate has got to have the drug company executives all popping lots of their own acid blockers.

If Pingree is currently the Hawkeye Pierce of health care politics in Maine, Maine House Speaker Michael Saxl is one of its brain surgeons. Behind the scenes this year he has quietly proposed the most comprehensive set of health care initiatives the Maine Legislature has probably ever seen from one legislator. His package focuses on expanding health insurance to the working class not covered by employer-based health insurance, but also includes expansion of access to prescription drugs for the poor and elderly, health care planning initiatives, and more. Saxl’s initiative on expanded access to health insurance could serve to bring the state closer to having universal health insurance for all residents via one health insurance program or another.

Equally important is Rep. Paul Volenik’s initiative for a single-payer system for health insurance in the state of Maine, a proposal that ultimately could serve as a model for the nation.

Whether Saxl’s political interests extend as far as his vision for health care remains to be seen, but successful tenure in the speaker’s chair and as an author of health care policy would make him a force to be reckoned with in any statewide political campaign.

Then there are the big boys and girls, U.S. Congressmen Tom Allen and John Baldacci, and U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Despite many differences in their positions on crucial health care issues, they have in common one striking similarity: All four have championed a number of health care causes important to Maine voters. For example, Allen is one of the nation’s experts on prescription drug costs. Snowe and Collins have championed women’s health issues. Baldacci sponsored legislation to increase access to less expensive Canadian drugs for American patients (and is the only one of the four who has said he wants to be governor of Maine).

What is striking in Maine is not simply that health care issues are identifying and defining our political leaders. More importantly, Maine has become a hothouse of health care politics and innovative approaches to health care issues, placing it and its health care political leaders in the forefront of national health care politics.

The Maine Rx program is the latest example. With its health care initiatives making national headlines, and its two U.S. senators now in crucial positions as moderate Republicans in a Senate barely controlled by Democrats, its leaders in health care politics have the potential to impact those politics on a national level.

What Maine voters expect of their politicians on health care issues will therefore be projected onto the national stage, and we must continue to expect a lot. That influence does not mean that you and I will be telling George Bush what to do on health care issues, but it does give new weight to the idea that “Where Maine goes, so goes the nation.”

That makes us all cool in my book, even if none of you ever ate a worm.

Erik Steele, D.O. is the administrator for emergency services at Eastern Maine Medical Center and is on the staff for emergency department coverage at six hospitals in the Bangor Daily News coverage area.