tavis: good eveninfrom los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. >> first up tight a nversation with the c.e.o.f one of the nation's leading heal care providers ron williams of aetna. he does not support a cl for a publicption if the health care debate b does want to e universal coverage. how is that possib? also tonightormer massachusetts senatordward brooke h his thoughts othe life and legacy of ted kennedy and finally a look at dr. king's onic speech at the march in

washington given 46 years ago this week. eric sundquist is theuthor of a book o thi subject called "king's dream." there are so many things th wal-mart is lookg forward to ing, like helping people liv betterut mostly we're looking forward to helping build relationips becae with your help, the best is yet to come. >> nationwide insurancproudly supportsavis smiley. tavis and nationwide insance working to irove financial literacy a the economic powerment that comes with it. ♪ nationwide is on yo side ♪ >>nd by contributions to your pbs station from vwers like you. thk you. [captioning ma possible by kcetublic television]

tavis: ron serena wiiams the c.e.o. o aetna, on -- ron williams is the c.e.o. o one of theeading insurance compani. aetna. he joins me tonigt. mr. wliams, it is an honor to haveou on the program. my time with you is limited. i nt to get to what i mentioned a mome ago before you came online which is that you are onrecord as being opposed to theuch talked about blic option, but yet you wan for every americ universal healthare. explain how at works. >> weli think the fundamental issue fous is to make certain that wfocus on getting and keeping eveone covered. and while many peoplstrongly believe in the public optis for reasons i wille glad to expla later, it really is a diversion. we have 45 mlion uninsured. ife really understand who those people are, wthink there e ways to address the barrie

to insurance that they fe. tavis: all right so tell me more then who arthese persons and how do we address the barrier >>ell, let's take the 45 million and segment them and break th down. therare 11 million of the 45 million who are eligib today for a program like micaid or the state children's hlth insurance prram. we don't finthem. we don't get them enrollednd therore they are uninred. one of the things would like to see imore energy and enthusiasm to findnd locate those people who are eligie today foinsurance but we simply don't reachut to find them. if we take another pt of the uninsud, about 10% are college d university students. we know where to fd them. they areery inexpensive to insure. and so between tse eligible four, thmedicaid program and the collegstudents we actually would be ablto cover the significant portioof that group. we also regnize that there are

prlems with the individual insurance marketnd we propose very substantive chaes that we think ll make that market work better more everyone. tavis: at the end of the day you' suggesting how to make e market work bette not thstanding, many belie the main reason public optn is necesry is that i that you all will behave. the the only way to keep the sts contained and get them der control is to provi that od old american idea known as competition so that if there is a public tion, people don't have to sign up for it b they ve an ouppingstoppings choo the pubc plan or atna or anything else, the competion keeps the costs down. your tughts? we are big believers in coetition. there are many that provide coetition in most communities if n all communities. when you think aboutealth insunce premiums there is confusionetween what reall dres the cost of health

insurance, which is rely the cost of helt care. the pmium isike having a thermometer that reads you temperature saying ur teerature is 103 and we can ta it and run it under cold water but i doesn't change yr temperature so if we want to make health care insuran more affordable we haveo really undersnd what is driving health car costs and that comes down the fac that all of us value and appreciatehe wonderful thgs that technology can do and i think the predent through his leadership has recommended me programs that help infortion thnology, prevention and wellness and tt refo and oth things that can slow down the rat of increase. if we slow down the incase in costhealth insurance will be more affdable for everye. >> prior to the goverent getting inlved, eier through more regulation, which a lot of folk in washingto have been against or b offering a plic option, take either one othose issues if prior to govnment getting volved in one of those

two ways, y all, sayhe industry, couldn't gure how to t these costs down, why does e industry come and say we can get the costs down witut governnt getting involved. >> it is not a matter of getting thecosts down. we believe tt is absolutel essential for affordability but theroposals that aetna made going back to 200 is elimining the use of pre-exisng conditions. an individual's medical stats as a bas to be issued insance. in order to eliminate that we have to have everyone in the insurance pool. ry simply put if you can buy insurance whenever you want it, at the evidence shows that ople wait until they need it and then they buy it and use i and drop it. in order to bring everyone in, elimine the use of you own individual heah circumsnces, we need to bri everyone into the pl. that way wcan keep everyone covert. we believe those that can afford

insurance should be ableo buy it and those who can't afford i shoulreceive either tax incentives, subsidies, vouchers, some mechanism to partipate in market. tavis: isn't tha the problem now? even for all the mey that we painto the stem, one courled arguthat americans are not getting what they oht to be get sfrg the nd of money they are paying io the system ast is now? >> well, i think there are many people who douestion the value that the health careystem is deliveng and many research studies suggesthat as much as 1/3 of the healtcare cts really is wasted or isot producing value. the answer to thateally is to inst in healtcare information technology. how many times havyou been to one doctor to take a test, gone to another docr and the been asked to repeat the sameest. that can be an emple of wae. ife conne the system electrically you can get the

care you need but it is an example of squeezing the waste out of the stem. i didant to make one other point. i think the dcussion to have public program is a diversion agnst the central goal that we should have toet and keep everyo covered. one punt return uninsured isne person -- oneerson uninsured is o person too many. tavis: why has $35 million already beenpent -- aet contributesome of that mon, to fighting agast this plan? this idea? i think would view it is that we have focused our energy on a aetna is working toet the right reform that makes ceain that everyoneets covered. don't think everyone ever, ever agree on eve aspt. we view this as a non-partisan issue. we mt with anyone interested in the right solution try to get more people covered. our point of ew is if you look

at t things people agree on, i think pele agree on about 8 of the tngs that are talked out in the context of health reform. i think peoplagree that werked get everyone covered. ere is a lot of agreemt. there is agreent that the s shld not use health status as lo as have a well nchronized reqrement that everyone purchasinsurance. i thin the aas of agreement are enormous and reprent important opportuties for the country. yolook atedicare and the implementation of medicare and mediid, the children's health insurance program,he medicare drug program, the all represent important advancemes that have beenood for citizens >>hen you have a country like ours where 80% of the people who not have insuranc those numbers you mentioned earlier, 80% of tse persons come from families where there a part-

time or fu-time workers. i hate the term "e working po. how can whave people who are working every day a still do not ha access to heth care? we have t look at the nature of how people get health care. there are almos 180 mlion people who are in empler sponsored heah plans to are reiving good care, and while certainly there isoom for improvemt in terms of e value people e getting, fundamentally the stem wor and works reasonably well where we see the big pblem is that the small employer market and individual market where people are sf-employed. if wlook at small busesses, if you take businesses above 10 employees, about 85% of those businesses actually offer insurance to the employees but the employe do not necessary make enough to be le to purchase that insance. that is whe the whole questn of if wcan afford tax subsidies or voucher some

mechanism to hp those people who cannot afford . in the indidual market, individual sty that -- health atus, which i have talked about. i ink the industry prepared to wait -- ve that as long as we have - >> therere many who arg right now that f we have health care reform that does not include a public ation, it really is not refor it has been an exerce in futility. your view of that is altogether different. >> i would say weave to undetand that when we look at thlevel of reimbursement that the avera hospital receives on medicare, medicare pays the hospital 80% of its costs. the differen that the hospita does not collect is turned around and placed othe shoulds of te employer sponsod system, or evethe uninsured wh have to pay the spital at retail rates. one of the things encourage

this if medica would reimburse hospitals at a higher level, it would reduce the rate of the emoyer sponsored insurce. we believe fundamentlly that if we undstand the issues that are prohibitingndividuals from getti health iurance, the government passes laws and regulation in ways that get to th fundamental proem, and we could lve the problem witho creating the rolof government both a player in the health planusiness and the refer in the business asell. >> jua williams, c of aetna. he has turned that company around. our healcare systems we know it mr. williams, nice to have the on the program in just a moment, a lk adr. king's iconic spee in the 1963 march on washingto i spoke with senato rhard burke, the first african american electedo the senate

since reconstruion, and althoughe was a republican, worked closely with senator ted kenny. >> it is an honor to have be on e program. thanyou for youtime. what was ilike for you servi alongside ted kennedyn the senate? >> enjed my serce with them -- th him. he is the senator who wald down the aisle and had lunch wi me when my wife and i first came to washinon. i worked withim on leslation, though he was a democrat and i was a republican. we usually voted the same way, and we became close friends. i knew his brother, the president, john f. kennedy and had an office next to robert kennedy. i knew the knedy's pretty well. in later year i've got to know ted kennedy even more than the others.

>> tell me how you worand his work intertwined, given that you were a republican and he a liberal democrat >> tech was alws interested in alth care. i was prarily interesd in hoing for the poor. on many other issues, voting rights act, civil-rights act, poverty, all those issues, and even on forgn pyolol issues as well as domestic, y would find us generally voting in theame way. >> thank you for your service and yourime, und these difficult momts, to talk abo your friendship th the late, grea edward kennedy. i appreate your ti to talk withs.

tavis: 46 years ago at the march on washington. the book is called a " king's dream, the legyf martin luther king' speech." i want to sta with a quote from the book. this rlly got my attention. you arright in this book i purelyhetorical terms, the dream speech may notave been king'sest. his speech at the conclusion of th votin rights march i 196 was arguably his most commanding. it raised a couple of questions for me. tell me why you think some of the montgomery speech w the most vending -- most demanding. >> it capped two eks of violence which resulted in jury to many civil rights protesters. george wallace waslooking out

through the closed blis at the marchers. it represented a hig poi in king's command of civ rights, that perhaps he had not reached in 1963. the great cold respon that he had engagedn, how long the crowd responded toim and his use of the phrase the ark of e universe is long,ut it bends toward world juice. there were a viety of things in that speech that because was partly impvised a much more responsive to the crowd then his speech in wasngton might havebeen rhetorically a most interesting. tavis: you mentioned you got the vietnam speech. assesshe vietnam speech. >> it was important, less rhetorically tha for the fac

that king stood out from his base of support in a y that put him somewhat at risk. did not have a significa support of those who had jned him all along the way in the march civil rights. berals of all strip who were supportive of th war or at leastilling to questn itn the same terms that he did. his critics said thate in effect spoke for thenemy rather than thenited states, and allowed it to circle back to some of the criticism from ear in hisareer when he was brded a communist o radica someone who was danrous to the company rather tn repsenting its best interests. it is not the language of speech so much as its polital effect. tavis: why does the "i have a dream" speecin doeenre?

one of th is a rhetorical, and re important t summer of 1963 was a critical moment in history of the vil rights moveme. iwas not t culmination cam somewhat lat, but was a critical momt in the sense thating was coming off areat victory, although a difcult, contentious victory i birmingham. demonstrationserepreading across the south, as many as 1000 difrent demonsttions were ned by t fbi in the mohs following biingham. t was the centennial of the emancipation pclamation, and it creathe opportunity for ng to galvanize the movement, to build on the victory in birmingham, to suggest that it was not a local mter specific to t cell. itas a natnal matter that

concerns the rigs of not just african-americans but all americans. the moment was signicant. rhetorically, the answers that absenthe last 11 minutes of the speech, which were improsed, in which king departed from hiprepared text, we wouldemember the speech as significant speech, in part because of the succe of the march itself and because o the enormous audience that king was able t speak ton television and elsewhere. we perhaps would t remember it as the dream speecbecause the cadences from which that deved, king decided extemporaneoly to deliver. weould not remember it for its commanding portrt of te united stas as a series of mountain rans fromhich freedo should ring, to eve stone down in georgia. we would not have foundeying calling from th deepeservoir

materials he had bn cultivating since his studt days, and certnly as minister over the course of his caree to spontaneously ach the crowd in a way he fe he had not quite reach them befor >> you wte about the fact that he's starts -- in.is: the speech has a ll es you cahear mahalia jkson in the backgrod saying, tell him the dream, martin.

she had hrd h use this refrain before he goes off script afteing encouraged by his friend ttell them about the dream. the speech just takes off and blows up. that is tharty right that we remember. you have written the ok on it. is e contract in the beginninthat really makes the eech. it ishat platform he built that makes all thadream stuff possible at the end. talko me about the fir half of how he constructed the speech. >> onef the things to point out is that the beginning prepares for the end in a very simple cents. he starts afr hisrief welcome by invoking the raham lioln without naming him, five score years ago american -- eat american in ose shadow we sta today. he sets the stagehere for the metaphoof the promissory note, which hdevelops a great lenh

in the early. reps. -- in the early paragraphs. his belief in the pure idl articulated by thomas jefferson and to the constitutio itself, about ich there was areat argumentbout whether it was a anti slary or proslavery doment, or whether it was neutral on that. sets the stage bysking us to understand the vision of the unding fathers a they were pufied in the sion of abraham lincoln in the emancipationroclamation. he then rehearses in a variety of ways the degree to which the civil war had deterrated over the urse of theubsequent 100 yes. the promissory note h to be redeemed a set oa new course towards ffillment in brown vs. board of education in 1954.

still, almost decade later after brown,he south was engagein masive resistance. the country was ambivalent about whether brn ought to b fulfilled or at what speed it ought to bfulfilled. what king ineffective did in the march onashington was traced that notthrough tha 150 year history d say nows the time to make it real. tavis: even though the speec delivered, n just on that day, it delivered beyond 1963, and t even then, and especially today, when we think about this speech 46 years laterit is the dream that we want to focus on, not t real challeng that king laidut in the fir part of that speh. why do you thi that is? >> the dreams a valuable metaphor. it suits all kinds of purpos for commercial, rketable use,

every kind of cause unr the sun has been attached to the dream. i think his best friend, ralph abnathy, got it right. he thohting's last speech was hisreatest speech, but abernathy concded that actually the dream sechas the most important, because he -- it offered what he called a prophecy of pu hope. its downside is can be adapted all kinds of different puoses. it can besed by conservative republicans to arguegainst affirmative acti. it can be used every conceivablcalls under the sun but nonetheless, there is something deeply atacted about that derives fm king's own sessment. it is dream deeply rooted in themerican dream, not just a dream of material prosperity, but the dream th he sd

animes the american enterise. tavis: there are many wh believe it was the greatest speechveriven. it will be dissected for many years to come. you have done a gd job ssecting the speech from 46 ars ago. itas nice to heavy on the program. >> it s been my plsure. tavis: i will see that coects time on pbs. until then, goodnight and tnk you for watchi. as always, keethe faith. >> for more infoation on today's at pbs.org. join me next timeor a look atatrina, four years later. that is next time we will see you then