DERRY, N.H.

Five years after Gov. Mitt Romney signed Massachusetts’ groundbreaking health care legislation, it has met its chief goal of extending insurance coverage to most residents — but with costs rising faster than inflation, lawmakers face the challenge of how to pay for it all.

Although the law has extended coverage, it has done little to fundamentally change the way consumers shop for health care, which analysts say is the only lasting solution to ballooning costs.

Massachusetts’ uninsured rate plunged to the lowest in the nation, from 6.4 percent to 1.9 percent, after the law was enacted in 2006. The rest of the nation averages close to 17 percent. Nearly every child has coverage, and more businesses are offering insurance plans...

WASHINGTON -- Former Gov. Mitt Romney, whose health care plan in Massachusetts supposedly served as inspiration to President Obama, is trying to shake from his record the state plan he once shepherded by vowing to dismantle the federal law if he captures the White House next year.

Romney's attack on a federal law that he unwittingly helped design is an attempt to tackle a huge weakness at the outset of his campaign for president -- a lesson he learned the last time he ran for president.

"If I am elected president, I will issue on my first day in office an executive order paving the way for waivers from ObamaCare for all 50 states," he wrote in an opinion article published in USAToday. "Subsequently, I will call on Congress to fully repeal ObamaCare"...

BOSTON | Massachusetts Democrats insist Sen. Scott Brown is vulnerable in next year’s elections, arguing the surprise winner last year of the seat long held by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has compiled such an uninspiring voting record that both Democrats and conservative Republicans will be gunning for him in 2012.

Despite the brave talk, state Democrats are having the hardest time recruiting a major candidate willing to take him on.

The Kennedy clan has taken a pass - Vicki Kennedy, the senator’s widow, is not interested, and former Rep. Joe Kennedy has suggested that he won’t be tossing his hat into the ring. The state’s top Democrat, Gov. Deval Patrick, also appears unwilling to enter the race...

Independents are flocking to Republican candidates, according to a new poll, signaling an important shift in the critical voting bloc that helped boost Democrats the past two cycles.

A Politico/George Washington University poll showed independents choosing Republicans by a 14-point margin. The survey showed those voters held a bleaker-than-average view of key Democratic policies -- 62 percent had an unfavorable view of the health care law, compared with 52 percent for all voters; 66 percent said the stimulus is not working, compared with 57 percent for all voters.

The movement continues a trend that started when independents began breaking for the GOP in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races and Massachusetts Senate race...

An author and mother of five is alarmed at the recent news of school districts in Massachusetts and Montana that in her opinion are encouraging the sexuality of young children.

From condoms for young children in Provincetown to sex education for kindergartners in Helena, Katie Reid -- author of When the Bough Breaks -- believes the intent of such actions is to provide children a means to engage in sexual relations with fewer possible side effects. But as Reid points out, there are more consequences to sex than just pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

"When you as a child engage in sex, you have no ability to really understand the depth of the gravity of the situation that you're dealing in or what it means to lose your innocence or how vulnerable having sex can make you," says the author. "And there seems to be a complete disregard for the emotional and social consequences of sex -- especially on girls."....

Boston (AP) - A federal judge's rulings in Massachusetts that the federal law banning gay marriage is unconstitutional could have implications far beyond the state if they're upheld by a higher court after an appeal by the Obama administration, legal experts say.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro said the law, the Defense of Marriage Act, interferes with the right of a state to define marriage and therefore denies married gay couples some federal benefits. He ruled Thursday in favor of gay couples' rights in two separate challenges to DOMA, which the administration of President Barack Obama has argued for repealing.

The rulings apply to Massachusetts, but if a higher court with a broader jurisdiction were to hear an appeal and agree with the judge's rulings, their impact would spread, said Boston College professor Kent Greenfield, a constitutional law expert. The rulings might encourage other attorneys general who oppose DOMA to sue to try to knock it down, he said...

BOSTON - Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has certified the results of Scott Brown's upset Senate election win, clearing the way for the Republican to succeed the late Democrat Edward Kennedy.

Vice President Joe Biden was slated to swear in Brown at 5 p.m. Thursday. Brown will become the 41st Republican member of the Senate, the precise number of votes the GOP needs to filibuster Obama administration initiatives...

BOSTON (AP) -- Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown, whose surprise win in the race to fill the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's seat created the sonic boom heard all the way to Washington, was visiting the nation's capital Thursday to pay a round of courtesy calls on his new colleagues.

Two days after his win cost President Barack Obama his filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate, Brown was making his first trip to the institution he reordered and the city he set abuzz after Tuesday's upset election.

The timing of his swearing-in remained in question. While Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin sent a letter to the Senate clerk Wednesday declaring Brown the unofficial winner of the seat, senators had to decide whether they were going to waive a waiting period for absentee ballot arrivals...

(CNSNews.com) – Rasmussen Reports, the only firm to attempt an exit poll on the surprise race, found that health care was the biggest issue weighing on Massachusetts voters’ minds as they stepped into the ballot box on Tuesday.

The special election to fill the Senate seat of Democrat Edward Kennedy ended with Republican Scott Brown defeating the state’s attorney general, Democrat Martha Coakley, by five points.

According to Rasmussen, 56 percent of voters named health care as their top issue when they left polling stations, but staying true to their usual support for a strong welfare state, Massachusetts voters actually handed Coakley a narrow win on the issue (53-46 percent)...