QUESTIONS:
1. President Bush recently signed the $400-billion Medicare/drug bill, the biggest new entitlement since Medicare itself was enacted. When did Medicare become law?
2. What was the name of the alternative to Medicare offered by congressional Republicans and supported by the American Medical Association?
3. What Republican House member introduced this alternative measure?
4. Who was the first President to propose the federal health insurance that would be enacted as Medicare?
5. In opposing Medicare in the early 1960s, the AMA distributed a 45-RPM record making the case against federal government's managing health care. Who narrated the record?
ANSWERS:
1. July 30, 1965.
2. "Eldercare" (under which government would pay for drug, doctor and surgical costs through subsidized Blue Cross-Blue Shield or other commercial insurance.
3. Rep. Thomas B. Curtis (R.-Mo.).
4. Harry S Truman, on Nov. 19, 1945.
5. Ronald Reagan.
OOPS: Longtime HUMAN EVENTS subscriber Al Cobb flagged us on our answer to the question (see "Political I.Q. - Week of November 24") about how many U.S. Navy veterans followed John Kennedy into the presidency. We said four (Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush). "As a Navy veteran myself," Cobb wrote, "I always thought Gerry Ford was one, too." He's right: Ford served in the Navy from 1942 until his discharge as a lieutenant commander in 1946.
