TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2009 (copyright 2009 Texas AFT)   * Not Debatable: Health-Insurance Costs and Uninsured Ranks Rising in Texas * AFT Study Looks at Recruitment of Teachers from Abroad   Health-Insurance Crisis: Reasonable people may differ over proposed solutions, but nobody can seriously deny the large and growing problem of health-insurance access and affordability.   For example, the U.S. Census Bureau has come out this month with new health-insurance data showing that Texas continues to lead the nation in the number and percentage of uninsured residents and of uninsured children. Texas holds this dubious distinction in spite of the larger numbers of children brought under federal Medicaid and the state Children's Health Insurance Program by recent legislative action (which Texas AFT strongly supported).   Nationally, the percentage of children without health insurance is 9.9 percent. In Texas the percentage is 17.9 percent. The percentage of all Texas residents who were uninsured in 2008 was 25.1 percent, up from 24.1 percent in 2006. These bleak findings all predate the onset of the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, so they almost certainly understate just how bad the situation is today.   While the ranks of the uninsured continue to grow, the costs of health care continue to rise much faster than American's ability to pay. A study published today by Families USA finds that health-care premiums for Texas families have gone up more than four times faster than wages since 2000. Since then the average cost of employment-based family coverage today has risen to $12,721 from $6,638. And the increase in premiums has been accompanied by reductions in benefits and higher deductibles.   These trends certainly have affected Texas teachers and other school employees. Year after year, hard-won pay increases are being swallowed up by higher health-care costs. Again, there's room to debate how to get out of this mess. But there's no denying it's a mess that urgently demands corrective action. To see the entire Families USA report, visit www.familiesusa.org online.   AFT Study Looks at Foreign Hiring: The American Federation of Teachers has issued a new report on the growing number of overseas-educated teachers hired to serve in U.S. schools. As Texas AFT can attest, this trend has put some talented teachers in our classrooms but also has led to questionable hiring practices and exploitation of teachers recruited from abroad, and it has not made a serious dent in the shortage of appropriately prepared professionals instructing Texas schoolchildren.   Texas in 2007 (the latest year for which data are available) ranked first among the 50 states in the number of applications filed by employers with federal immigration authorities to justify the importation of teachers from abroad. In fact, from 2002 through 2007, Texas alone accounted for 31 percent of all such applications for overseas teacher hiring filed nationwide. You can view the AFT report on "Importing Educators: Causes and Consequences of International Teacher Recruitment," at http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/intl/Teacher_Migration.pdf.