tavis: good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. >> first up tonight a conversation with the c.e.o. of one of the nation's leading health care providers. ron williams of aetna. he does not support a call for a public option if the health care debate but does want to see universal coverage. how is that possible? also tonight former massachusetts senator edward brooke had his thoughts on the life and legacy of ted kennedy and finally a look at dr. king's iconic speech at the march in

washington given 46 years ago this week. eric sundquist is the author of a book on this subject called "king's dream." >> there are so many things that wal-mart is looking forward to doing, like helping people live better but mostly we're looking forward to helping build stronger communities and relationships because with your help, the best is yet to come. >> nationwide insurance proudly supports tavis smiley. tavis and nationwide insurance working to improve financial literacy and the economic empowerment that comes with it. ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television]

tavis: ron serena williams the c.e.o. of aetna, one -- ron williams is the c.e.o. of one of the leading insurance companies. aetna. he joins me tonight. mr. williams, it is an honor to have you on the program. my time with you is limited. i want to get to what i mentioned a moment ago before you came online which is that you are onrecord as being opposed to the much talked about public option, but yet you want for every american universal health care. explain how that works. >> well i think the fundamental issue for us is to make certain that we focus on getting and keeping everyone covered. and while many people strongly believe in the public options for reasons i will be glad to explain later, it really is a diversion. we have 45 million uninsured. if we really understand who those people are,e think there

are ways to address the barriers to insurance that they face. tavis: all right. so tell me more then. who are these persons and how do we address the barriers? >> well, let's take the 45 million and segment them and break them down. there are 11 million of the 45 million who are eligible today for a program like medicaid or the state children's health insurance program. we don't find them. we don't get them enrolled and therefore they are uninsured. one of the things i would like to see is more energy and enthusiasm to find and locate those people who are eligible today for insurance but we simply don't reach out to find them. if we take another part of the uninsured, about 10% are college and university students. we know where to find them. they are very inexpensive to insure. and so between those eligible four, the medicaid program and the college students we actually would be able to cover the significant portion of that group. we also recognize that there are

problems with the individual insurance market and we propose very substantive changes that we think will make that market work better more everyone. tavis: at the end of the day you're suggesting how to make the market work better, not withstanding, many believe the main reason public option is necessary is that i that you al will behave. the the only way to keep these costs contained and get them under control is to provide that good old american idea known as competition so that if there is a public option, people don't have to sign up for it but they have an ouppingstoppings choose the public plan or aetna or anything else, the competition keeps the costs down. your thoughts? >> we are big believers in competition. there are many that provide competition in most communities if not all communities. when you think about health insurance premiums there is a confusion between what really

drives the cost of health insurance, which is really the cost of helt care. the premium is like having a thermometer that reads your temperature saying your temperature is 103 and we can take it and run it under cold water but it doesn't change your temperature so if we want to make health care insurance more affordable we have to really understand what is driving health care costs and that comes down the fact that all of us value and appreciate the wonderful things that technology can do and i think the president through his leadership has recommended some programs that help information technology, prevention and wellness and tort reform and other things that can slow down the rate of increase. if we slow down the increase in costs health insurance will be more affordable for everyone. >> prior to the government getting involved, either through more regulation, which a lot of folk in washington have been against or by offering a public option, take either one of those issues, if prior to government

getting involved in one of those two ways, you all, say the industry, couldn't figure how to get these costs down, why does the industry come and say we can get the costs down without government getting involved. >> it is not a matter of getting the costs down. we believe that is absolutely essential for affordability but the proposals that aetna made going back to 2005 is eliminating the use of pre-existing conditions. an individual's medical stats as a basis to be issued insurance. in order to eliminate that we have to have everyone in the insurance pool. very simply put if you can buy insurance whenever you want it, what the evidence shows that people wait until they need it and then they buy it and use it and drop it. in order to bring everyone in, eliminate the use of your own individual health circumstances, we need to bring everyone into the pool. that way we can keep everyone covert.

we believe those that can afford insurance should be able to buy it and those who can't afford it should receive either tax incentives, subsidies, vouchers, some mechanism to participate in market. tavis: isn't that the problem now? even for all the money that we pay into the system, one courled argue that americans are not getting what they ought to be get sfrg the kind of money they are paying into the system as it is now? >> well, i think there are many people who do question the value that the health care system is delivering and many research studies suggest that as much as 1/3 of the health care costs really is wasted or is not producing value. the answer to that really is to invest in health care information technology. how many times have you been to one doctor to take a test, gone to another doctor and then been asked to repeat the same test. that can be an example of waste. if we connect the system

electronically you can get the care you need but it is an example of squeezing the waste out of the system. i did want to make one other point. i think the discussion to have public program is a diversion against the central goal that we should have to get and keep everyone covered. one punt return uninsured is one person -- one person uninsured is one person too many. tavis: why has $35 million already been spent -- aetna contributed some of that money, to fighting against this plan? this idea? >> i think i would view it is that we have focused our energy on at aetna is working to get the right reform that makes certain that everyone gets covered. i don't think everyone ever, ever agree on every aspect. we view this as a non-partisan issue. we meet with anyone interested in the right solution to try to get more people covered.

our point of view is if you look at the things people agree on, i think people agree on about 80% of the things that are talked about in the context of health reform. i think people agree that werked get everyone covered. there is a lot of agreement. there is agreement that the she should not use health status as long as have a well synchronized requirement that everyone purchase insurance. i think the areas of agreement are enormous and represent important opportunities for the country. you look at medicare and the implementation of a medicare and medicaid, the children's health insurance program, the medicare drug program, these all represent important advancements that have been good for citizens. >> when you have a country like ours where 80% of the people who do not have insurance, those numbers you mentioned earlier, 80% of those persons come from families where there are part-

time or full-time workers. i hate the term "the working poor. how can we have people who are working every day and still do not have access to health care? >> we have to look at the nature of how people get health care. there are almost 180 million people who are in employer sponsored health plans to are receiving good care, and while certainly there is room for improvement in terms of the value people are getting, fundamentally the system works and works reasonably well. where we see the big problem is that the small employer market and individual market where people are self-employed. if we look at small businesses, if you take businesses above 10 employees, about 85% of those businesses actually offer insurance to their employees, but the employees do not necessarily make enough to be able to purchase that insurance. that is where the whole question of if we can afford tax

subsidies or vouchers, some mechanism to help those people who cannot afford it. in the individual market, individual style that -- health status, which i have talked about. i think the industry is prepared to wait -- wave that as long as we have -- >> there are many who argue right now that if we have health care reform that does not include a public auction, it really is not reform. it has been an exercise in futility. your view of that is altogether different. >> i would say we have to understand that when we look at the level of reimbursement that the average hospital receives on medicare, medicare pays the hospital 80% of its costs. the difference that the hospital does not collect is turned around and placed on the shoulders of the employer sponsored system, or even the uninsured who have to pay the hospital at retail rates. one of the things we encourage

this if medicare would reimburse hospitals at a higher level, it would reduce the rate of the employer sponsored insurance. we believe fundamentally that if we understand the issues that are prohibiting individuals from getting health insurance, the government passes laws and regulations in ways that get to the fundamental problem, and we could solve the problem without creating the role of government as both a player in the health plan business and the referee in the business as well. >> juan williams, ceo of aetna. he has turned that company around. our healthcare system as we know it. mr. williams, nice to have the on the program. in just a moment, a look at dr. king's iconic speech in the 1963 march on washington. i spoke with senator richard burke, the first african- american elected to the senate

since reconstruction, and although he was a republican, he worked closely with senator ted kennedy. >> it is an honor to have be on the program. thank you for your time. what was it like for you serving alongside ted kennedy in the senate? >> i enjoyed my service with them -- with him. he is the senator who walked down the aisle and had lunch with me when my wife and i first came to washington. i worked with him on legislation, 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 kennedy's pretty well. in later years i've got to know ted kennedy even more than the

others. >> tell me how your work and his work intertwined, given that you were a republican and he a liberal democrat. >> tech was always interested in health care. i was primarily interested in housing for the poor. on many other issues, voting rights act, civil-rights act, poverty, all those issues, and even on foreign policy issues as well as domestic, you would find us generally voting in the same way. >> thank you for your service and your time, under these difficult moments, to talk about your fridship with the late, great, edward kennedy. i appreciate your time to talk with us.

tavis: 46 years ago at the march on washington. the book is called a " king's dream, the legacy of martin luther king's speech." i want to start with a quote from the book. this really got my attention. you are right in this book in purely rhetorical terms, the dream speech may not have been king's best. his speech at the conclusion of the voting rights march in 1965 was arguably his most commanding. it raised a couple of questions for me. tell me why you think some of the montgomery speech was the most vending -- most demanding. >> it capped two weeks of violence which resulted in injury to ma civil rights protesters. george wallace was looking out

through the closed blinds at the marchers. it represented a high point in king's command of cil rights, that perhaps he had not reached in 1963. the great cold response that he had engaged in, how long the crowd responded to him and his use of the phrase the ark of the universe is long, but it bends toward world justice. there were a variety of things in that speech that because it was partly improvised and much more responsive to the crowd then his speech in washington might have been rhetorically a most interesting. tavis: you mentioned you got the vietnam speech. assess the vietnam speech. >> it was important, less

rhetorically than for the fact that king stood out from his base of support in a way that put him somewhat at risk. he did not have a significant support of those who had joined him all along the way in the march of civil rights. liberals of all stripes who were supportive of the war or at least willing to question it in the same terms that he did. his critics said that he in effect spoke for the enemy rather than the united states, and allowed it to circle back to some of the criticism from early in his career when he was branded a communist or radical, someone who was dangerous tohe company rather than representing its best interests. it is not the language of speech so much as its political effect. tavis: why does the "i have a dream" speech in doeendure?

>> one of them is a rhetorical, and more important, the summer of 1963 was a critical moment in history of the civil rights movement. it was not the culmination came somewhat later, but was a critical moment in the sense that king was coming off a great victory, although a difficult, contentious victory in birmingham. demonstrations were spreading across the south, as many as 1000 different demonstrations were noted by the fbi in the months following birmingham. it was the centennial of the emancipation proclamation, and it created the opportunity for king to galvanize the movement, to build on the victory in birmingham, to suggest that it was not a local matter specific to the cell. it was a national matter that

concerns the rights of not just african-americans but all americans. the moment was significant. rhetorically, the answer is that absent the last 11 minutes of the speech, which were improvised, in which king departed from his prepared text, we would remember the speech as a significant speech, in part because of the success of the march itself and because of the enormous audience that king was able to speak to on television and elsewhere. we perhaps would not remember it as the dream speech because the cadences from which that derived, king decided extemporaneously to deliver. we would not remember it for its commanding portrait of the united states as a series of mountain ranges from which freedom should ring, to even stone down in georgia. we would not have found keying calling from this deep reservoir

of materials he had been cultivating since his student days, and certainly as minister over the course of his career to spontaneously reach the crowd in a way he felt he had not quite reach them before. >> you write about the fact that he's starts -- tavis: the speech has a lull i it for a few minutes. you can hear mahalia jackson in the background saying, tell him

about the dream, martin. she had heard him use this refrain before. he goes off script after being encouraged by his friend to tell them about the dream. the speech just takes off and blows up. that is the party right that we remember. you have written the book on it. it is the contract in the beginning that really makes the speech. it is that platform he built that makes all that dream stuff possible at the end. talk to me about the first half of how he constructed the speech. >> one of the things to point out is that the beginning prepares for the end in a very simple cents. he starts after his brief welcome by invoking the abraham lincoln without naming him, five score years ago american -- great american in whose shadow we stand today. he sets the stage there for the metaphor of the promissory note, which he develops a great length

in the early. reps. -- in the early paragraphs. his belief in the pure ideal articulated by thomas jefferson, and to the constitution itself, about which there was a great argument about whether it was an anti slavery or proslavery document, or whether it was neutral on that. he sets the stage by asking us to understand the vision of the founding fathers as they were purified in the vision of abraham lincoln in the emancipation proclamation. he then rehearses in a variety of ways the degree to which the civil war had deteriorated over the course of the subsequent 100 years. the promissory note had to be redeemed and set on a new course towards fulfillment in brown vs. board of education in 1954.

still, almost a decade later after brown, the south was engaged in massive resistance. the country was ambivalent about whether brown ought to be fulfilled or at what speed it ought to be fulfilled. what king ineffective did in the march on washington was traced that note through that 150 year history and say now is the time to make it real. tavis: even though the speech delivered, not just on that day, it delivered beyond 1963, and yet even then, and especially today, when we think about this speech 46 years later, it is the dream that we want to focus on, not the real challenge that king laid out in the first part of that speech. why do you think that is? >> the dream is a valuable metaphor. it suits all kinds of purposes

for commercial, marketable use, every kind of cause under the sun has been attached to the dream. i think his best friend, ralph abernathy, got it right. he thought king's last speech was his greatest speech, but abernathy concluded that actually the dream speech was the most important, because he -- it offered what he called a prophecy of pure hope. its downside is it can be adapted to all kinds of different purposes. it can be used by conservative republicans to argue against affirmative action. it can be used byvery conceivable calls under the sun, but nonetheless, there is something deeply attracted about that derives from king's own assessment. it is a dream deeply rooted in the american dream, not just a dream of material prosperity,

but the dream that he sai animates the american enterprise. tavis: there are many who believe it was the greatest speech ever given. it will be dissected for many years to come. you have done a good job dissecting the speech from 46 years ago. it was nice to heavy on the program. >> it has been my pleasure. tavis: i will see that connects time on pbs. until then, goodnight and thank you for watching. as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> join me next time for a look at katrina, four years later. that is next time.

we will see you then.