TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2009   AFT Leader Offers Tough Response to Flawed Health-Care Bill in U.S. Senate   Today the U.S. Senate Finance Committee approved a severely flawed version of health-care reform offered by committee chair Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana. The bill, passed by a 14-to-nine vote, drew an appropriately tough response from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Here's what she had to say in a press statement issued this afternoon:    "The U.S. Senate Finance Committee's health-care reform bill was developed with good intentions, but it has serious defects that could jeopardize insurance affordability for both the insured and the uninsured. The only way to truly reform our health-care system and strengthen our economy is to make health insurance affordable so it is accessible. The Finance Committee's failure to include a robust national public plan to provide competition to private insurers makes achieving this goal difficult, if not impossible.   "The subsidies available in the bill's health insurance exchanges for the uninsured are inadequate, making the cost of health insurance out of reach for many families and individuals. But affordability doesn't just affect the uninsured. It also affects the more than 160 million workers and their families, who through negotiations or otherwise, have employer-provided coverage. Over $1,000 from the premium of each family plan--paid by employers and employees--actually subsidizes the cost of the uninsured. The Finance Committee bill's health insurance tax increases will add to these costs and become, in effect, a tax on the middle class.   "The mark of true health-care reform is that it is affordable, accessible and encourages--not discourages--good and continued coverage for the already insured. These goals cannot be achieved without a public option, nor can they be achieved by increasing the tax burden on middle-class workers with employer-provided coverage.   "The AFT will continue to fight for true health-care reform, and we urge members of Congress to vote only for a bill that provides it."   Fortunately, the Baucus bill will not be the Senate's last word on health care; this bill and a much better one passed by the Senate Health Committee now must be merged before a single bill goes to the Senate floor, and negotiations over the shape of that merged bill already have begun. Whatever the Senate passes then will have to be reconciled in a conference committee with whatever the House passes.   The current, still tentative timetable calls for the full House to debate and vote on health-care reform in the last week of October, with the Senate taking up its own version of the bill early in November. Be on the lookout for updates and alerts over these next few, crucial weeks. Congress is closer than it's ever been to passing a health-care overhaul. It's in our power to help make sure that what ultimately passes is the real health-care reform the nation needs.