host: this is martha from maine. caller: yes, this is martha clark, and i would like to ask mr. will, why do you include insurance companies to the health equation. they bring nothing to the table. they make money and prevent health care. guest: that seems to me as a eccentric view of the current function of insurance companies in the country. i don't know how to grasp they prevent health care. are they trying to make a profit? yes, and you make a profit by providing what people want to buy. and therefore the market is benign to give products and in this case health coverage that people want. and those countries that thrive are doing just that. host: what are you reading this summer? guest: elmer blore has a new novel and i am listening on tape the history, called the waking giant. lots of stuff. host: there are predictions that books will go to all news. guest: i like a book in my hand, but i am a fossil. host: with regard of newspapers, and what do you think of the business and the journalists being replaced by much coverage on the internet? guest: it's stunning and you can't

tell me about martha johnson. >> i think that was the real force that shaped my life and the life of my siblings, our mother was one who taught us the basic things about endurance and commitment and honesty and hard work. she demonstrated her courage, when our father, her husband, had a strong, very early and she had to make ends meet, to give us an education, she was a pastor, so she was deeply rooted in faith and so, we grew up in a family whom, based on prayers and faith and hard work, and i think everything that represents the character in me, really had come from her and the up bringing that she did in our family. [applause]. >> you also go through, i know you make a great point in the beginning of the book as will, to really discuss your roots, and to sit the record straight about your roots. why was that so important to you? sn>> you know, the book is not only about my life story, but i hope in certain small ways identify captured our nation in its history, its beginnings. its triumphs and its tragedy. and for me in the family, our roots were, like i say, we perhaps bridged tw

in fact, martha only leaves us three letters in her lifetime. thomas jefferson burned his correspondence with his wife so we don't even know anything about his wife, traces of these women have been lost. but not only do they e raise their wives from history but also their own emotions and a wage john adams did not. he left these documents for historians to work with and it makes it wonderful because he is a person who becomes very human and all of his own right things about himself. he was brilliant comment amazingly creative and it is fun to be around creative people so it is fun to read the ideas that he had. and john adams, he never used to adjectives when he could use 12 and he did use 12. he just had an amazing capacity to invent and play out ideas and just wonderful prose so that reading him is reading a very fine person. he was a courageous and $0.02. he was courageous in eight intellectual sense that he defended the unpopular members of the british soldiers that participated in the boston massacre when many others that time would not def

in fact, martha washington leaves us only three letters in her lifetime. thomas jefferson burned his correspondence with his wife. so we don't even know anything about his wife. traces of these women have been lost, but not only did they erase their wives from history, but they erased their own emotions in a way that john adams didn't. he left these documents for historians to work with, and it makes it wonderful, because he was a person who becomes very human if all of his own writings about himself. he was brilliant. he was an amazingly creative man, and it's fun to be around creative people, so that it's fun to read the ideas that he had. and john adams never used -- he was a wonderful writer, he never used two adjectives when he could use 12 and he did use 12. he just had this amazing capacity to invent and play out ideas in just wonderful prose, so that reading him is reading a very fun person. he was courageous. he was courageous in two senses. he was courageous in a intellectual sense, in that he defended the unpopular members, the british soldiers

this is martha clarke in that rock landed and out like to ask mr. well, why you included insurance companies in the health equation at all. they bring nothing to the table are in the business to make money and to prevent health care. thank you. >> guest: that seems to me is an eccentric view of the current function of history of insurance companies and our country. i don't know quite how to grasp the thought of there to prevent health care. are they trying to make a profit? yes and the way you make a profit in this country is providing something that many people want to buy in there for the market is i think in nine in that sense that it gives a profit oriented company an incentive to provide products in this case health coverage to the people want in those countries that thrive in excess of the decades are doing just that. >> host: what are you reading this summer? >> guest: well, elmore leonard has a new novel out and george bell, this is a new novel about so i am reading some novels. in listening to recorded books and driving over here and will l

and although conversations >> i'm interested and i think martha has a great platform and it is not going away and tell me is the guy who spearheaded the whole campaign back in eda. amazing position and a researcher. >> one of the central characters in the book, right? >> david clarke? >> the book made into the hbo movie. >> aren't you michael smerconish? national syndicated radio talk-show host, regular author radio guy who cares a lot about issues than you care about. >> is this for real? twice still need to be concerned? >> the swine flu? it's not predictable it's pointed to but it's not acting any more severe than a regular seasonal flu it is just out of season. it means it probably is more unpredictable than the standard viruses that go around seasonally so i always have to overemphasize the caution but the way that its acting now it doesn't look like it is going to explode into 81918 tie. what we are the most concerned about and watching is we are coming out of the flu season so it doesn't spread very well in the temperate climates. we won't know until the fall and winter of the nex

host: our next call, martha, on the republican line, from austin, texas. -- on the independent line, from austin, texas. caller: first of all, you made the comment about you should have private markets and the market economy works. but it does not, or we would not have to bail out gm and all those other companies. second of all, single payer would be run like medicare. medicare -- i am over 70, and it works fine. it runs at low cost, so i do not understand why you are not more or less promoting that. also, you would be given a choice so if you wanted your own company, you could keep your own plan. but also, you need to take insurance companies out of it because insurance companies are making these huge profits. they can turn you down if you have the pre-existing condition. they can say, no, we're not going to pay for that particular procedure. we need single payer health care for all, and it would run like medicare at low cost. guest: well, medicare is currently on affordable. as president obama has saysid, t is a big drop ever of projected -- is a big driver of projected insolvency.

for example, in a speech in 2002, judge sotomayor embraced the remarks of judith resnik and martha minnow, who are two prominent law professors who each proposed theories about judging that are far different from the way that i think most americans think about these issues. most americans think that the people elect their representatives, members of the house and senate, to write the laws. and that judges, rather than rewriting those laws, should interpret those laws in a fair and commonsense way without imposing their own views on what the law should be. most americans think that when judges impose their own views on a case, when they substitute their own political preferences for those of the people and their elected representatives, they undermine democratic self-governance and they became judicial activists. professors resnik and minnow have very different ideas from, i think, the mainstream american thought on what a judge's job should be. their views may not be controversial in the ivory tower of academia. academics often encourage each other to engage in provocative theories and so

and my mother martha mcdowell passed away not quite four years ago and our thoughts and prayers are with them always. but especially today. i would also like to extend my public congratulations to genachowski and his beautiful family on his nomination and if we are both confirmed, i look forward to working with him in the same bipartisan manner i pursued for the past three years. furthermore, i want to acknowledge the warm friendship and support i've received from acting chairman mike kopps and commissioner jonathan addlestein. i've enjoyed work with them and especially in the past six months. although we don't always agree, our disagreements are almost always pleasant. in fact, while the three of us have enjoyed this collegial time at the commission this year, folks have started calling us the three amigos. if confirmed, i look forward to continuing to work with mike at the commission and jonathan just down the street at the rural utility service, should he be confirmed for that post. while i'm on the topic of us working together, i'd be remiss if i did not discuss with this committee t

now i like to introduce martha who i'm sure is well known to all of you. he is the director of the annenberg center at brookings where he draws on his public sector experience having led both cms and fda and, of course, brings his background as a physician and an economist to that role. mark most recently has been playing a key role in the development of the bill baker daschle plan and an important bipartisan agreement on health care reform and he will describe some of the multi care initiatives that he's involved in that concern as a model for health-care reform. >> thank you. it is great to be here this morning with all of you. how are we doing on the slides coming up fykes okay. this is a very distinguished panel and i'm glad someone had taken time to be here and we're seeing some discussion at around payment from an improving how it works. i'm going to talk about that as nancy mentioned focusing on things like accountable care and multi stakeholder approaches to doing this. but it is very refreshing to see how much of an emphasis there is on getting th