TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2009 (copyright 2009 Texas AFT)   * AFT President’s Back-to-School Tour Headed for Houston * Health-Care Reform Mythology--Myth #4   Back-to-School Tour Headed for Houston: Tomorrow American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten will come to Houston on the second leg of an eight-city national back-to-school tour promoting school/community alliances for school improvement and other elements of AFT's distinctive reform agenda. In Houston President Weingarten will help put the spotlight on efforts of Houston-area AFT affiliates to forge community alliances and develop support for the concept of community schools, which function as the center of a web of comprehensive educational and social services to meet the needs of students and their families.   Plans for the day in Houston include a mid-day press conference highlighting school/community cooperation to turn around a struggling high school in Houston ISD and an evening roundtable discussion sponsored by the Houston Federation of Teachers on a variety of local school/community partnership initiatives.   You can follow the AFT Back-to-School Tour online at http://www.aft.org/tour/ --and of course we will keep you posted via t he hotline.   Get the Facts Straight on Health-Care Reform: Today we forward from the American Federation of Teachers the fourth in a series of mythbusting messages about health-care reform.   MYTH #4: Co-ops are an adequate substitute for a national public insurance plan.   THE FACTS: A co-op is not a substitute for a national public health insurance plan, nor are co-ops a new idea. During the 1930s and 1940s, a health-care cooperative movement was introduced in the United States; it failed. Co-ops were too small and undercapitalized to survive a physicians' boycott. Today, experts estimate that co-ops would need at least 25,000 participants to be financially viable and more than 500,000 participants to be able to negotiate for lower rates. They would be essentially too small and too fractured to have effective bargaining power against the health insurance industry. For example, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan controls 65 percent of the state's commercial market and would not be challenged by a "start-up" co-op.   Visit www.aft.org/fight4america to learn more about AFT's position on health-insurance reform and how you can be part of the action.