ACS Approves New Policy Statements

At its meeting earlier this month in Baltimore, the ACS Board of Directors approved two new official policy statements.

The "Statement on Association Healthcare Plans" seeks to address the difficulty that self-employed people and small-business employees have in obtaining affordable health insurance. "Currently, concern about access to affordable health care inappropriately overshadows many people's ability to succeed, innovate, pursue new career options, or retire. ACS believes that failure to resolve health care and health insurance issues may have lasting consequences to ACS members, the chemical enterprise, and ultimately U.S. global competitiveness," it states.

ACS is among the many professional societies that have tried to offer health insurance plans to their members. Currently, myriad state regulations and mandatory coverage requirements make it prohibitively difficult and expensive to offer coverage in all states. In this statement, ACS states unequivocally that it favors federal legislation to allow association-sponsored insurance programs.

The "Statement on Computer Simulations in Academic Laboratories" puts the society on the record as noting that computer simulations, which by their very nature do not involve contact with chemicals or lab equipment, should not be considered equivalent replacements for hands-on experiences critical to chemistry courses at any level.

The full policy statements are available at www.acs.org/policy.