3 Questions Examines Health Care Reform, "God Particle"

Over the past few weeks, two of the most notable news stories have been the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act and the announcement, via the European Organization for Nuclear Research, of the most conclusive evidence yet for the existence of the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle."

MIT News recently covered both topics in "3 Questions," a long-standing segment on the MIT News site where expert MIT faculty and researchers are asked three questions about timely topics and their future implications.

MIT News first spoke to MIT political scientist Andrea Campbell, an expert in the politics of social insurance whose April op-ed in The New York Times was cited by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her opinion of the case.

From MIT News:

Q. How do you think this will play out politically, between now and the election in November?

A. Implementation means that yet other provisions people don’t know about, but that have the potential to be popular, will now come to fruition. For example, one of the fears that many Americans have of the law is that people will be forced to buy insurance they cannot afford. What has been under the radar is that [the ACA has] a whole set of subsidies for insurance, on a sliding scale, that go up to 400 percent of the poverty level. (Read the entire Q & A.)

 

Christoph Paus, an MIT professor of physics, is one of two lead investigators on the Higgs search. More than 50 MIT physicists and students were part of the experiment, the largest number from any American institution.

From MIT News:

Q. What are the implications of this newly discovered particle? Why should non-physicists care about this?

A. The Higgs boson holds the promise of beginning to finally elucidate the fundamental origins of mass. We cannot yet say whether the phenomenon we are reporting today is indeed the Higgs; that will take much more data to determine. But so far it fulfills our search criteria, and if confirmed, will set an important milestone in our understanding of nature. (Read the entire Q & A.)

Campbell and Paus are the two most recent additions to “3 Questions.” Check out the archive, which dates back more than four years, and view topics like the withdrawal from Iraq, the climate change epidemic, U.S. border security, and the global financial crisis.