Massachusetts

Three years ago, Massachusetts passed the most sweeping healthcare bill in the country, adopting a plan that closely resembles the proposals being considered by Congress. It is a plan that now offers powerful lessons learned for the whole country. The Massachusetts system, like the proposals moving toward votes in the House and Senate, focused on three goals: making medical insurance almost universal, fostering competition through a regulated insurance exchange, and helping low-income workers pay for coverage.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) has decided against succeeding his close friend and mentor, the late Edward M. Kennedy, as chairman of the Senate's health committee, a senior Senate aide said Tuesday. The decision sets in motion a game of musical chairs involving committee chairmanships after Kennedy's death. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is next in line after Dodd to assume the chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Multiple sources, who requested anonymity when discussing internal deliberations, said Harkin was sure to take over the post.

Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley announced Thursday that she would run as a Democratic candidate in the special election to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Coakley said the state has had a "crisis of confidence" since Kennedy's death last week of brain cancer, and that she believed she could continue to be "an effective voice for the people of Massachusetts." "We've depended on him here in the Commonwealth and in Washington, and we will miss his strength and leadership and his sense of humor.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) lashed out at protester who held a poster depicting President Obama with a Hitler-style mustache during a heated town hall meeting on the healthcare overhaul. "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" Frank asked the woman, who had stepped up to a microphone at a senior center to ask why Frank supported what she called a Nazi policy. "As you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase healthcare to the Nazis . . . it is a tribute to the 1st Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated," Frank said.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Monday that he would work to change state law so that he could appoint a temporary replacement for the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy before a special election next year. Appointing an interim senator would ensure that Massachusetts is fully represented, Patrick said at a news conference at the statehouse in Boston. He said he would seek the individual's personal assurance that he or she wouldn't run in the special election to serve out the veteran Democrat's term, which runs through 2012.

In an extraordinary outpouring of public emotion, thousands of people solemnly lined state highways and city streets Thursday to pay their last respects to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the legendary scion of America's most storied political dynasty. They came from Argentina and Ireland, from New York and New Hampshire. But mostly they came from across Massachusetts -- the state Kennedy dominated for nearly five decades -- many to weep or pray as his flag-draped casket was transported in a poignant procession from the family compound in Hyannis Port to his fallen brother's presidential library in Boston.