The second year of Affordable Care Act insurance enrollment
began without the widespread technical meltdowns that frustrated
consumers last year, but the next few weeks will test whether
HealthCare.gov can continue to operate reliably.
The site processed tens of thousands of applications during the
opening weekend, Nov. 15-16, and appeared to experience only
isolated bumps. More than 500,000 people successfully logged into
HealthCare.gov on the first day, and about 100,000 submitted
insurance applications to the site, federal health officials
said.
Pockets of problems, however, did emerge. Some previous users
who returned to HealthCare.gov had trouble submitting or resetting
passwords, locking them out of accounts.
A handful of state-run exchanges, such as those in Washington
and Vermont, grappled with technology gaffes over the weekend that
at times stalled enrollment.
The relatively smooth start was a relief to the Obama
administration, which had spent months testing HealthCare.gov to
avoid a repeat of last year's embarrassing site crashes.
"The vast majority of people coming to the site were able to get
on and do what they intended to do," Health and Human Services
Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said Sunday on NBC.
Stephanie Armour, Louise Radnofsky And Anna Wilde Mathews The
Wall Street Journal Break on Student Debt
Thousands of people struggling to pay back student debt are in
line to get a break as two big lenders roll out programs to ease
loan terms.
After years of industry resistance to the move, Wells Fargo,
which has $11.9 billion of private student loans outstanding, has
decided to lower interest rates for all eligible borrowers for the
first time starting this month, and it plans to extend repayment
periods starting in February. The moves could save borrowers
thousands of dollars in interest payments.
Discover Financial Services, another major lender, plans to
begin modifying loans early next year, and it is considering
lowering interest rates and waiving a portion of balances for some
of the hardest-hit borrowers.
The two firms described their plans to The Wall Street Journal,
and Wells Fargo detailed some of the measures in a news
release.
The programs initially will affect a small group of borrowers.
Wells Fargo says it expects to modify loans for between 600 and
1,000 customers by the end of next year. But the move is a notable
development for struggling borrowers, as most private student
lenders have long resisted loan modifications.
SLM Corp., the largest private student lender in the U.S. by
loan-origination volume, began offering modifications in 2009,
reducing interest rates to as low as 1% for delinquent borrowers
for periods of as long as two years. The company, known as Sallie
Mae, has allowed some struggling borrowers to extend their
repayment periods in order to lower their monthly loan payments.
Wells Fargo is the second-largest private student lender, followed
by Discover. Together, the three firms account for about 30% of
private student-loan balances.
The shift in approach is driven by an effort to pare losses. But
over the past year, the federal Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau has pushed the industry to help student borrowers facing
financial hardship.The bureau's student-loan ombudsman, Rohit
Chopra, last month chided lenders, saying customers seeking
modifications were "getting snubbed." Since the 2008 recession
sparked a spike in defaults, most lenders haven't offered options
for modifying private education loans, but now Wells Fargo and
Discover are embracing changes.
AnnaMaria Andriotis The Wall Street Journal Tuition Revenue
Weakens
More than half of public colleges in the U.S. are failing to
bring in enough tuition revenue to keep up with inflation, and
nearly as many private schools are facing a similar financial
crisis, according to Moody's Investors Service.
Universities are forecasting that fiscal 2015 will be their
weakest year of net tuition revenue growth in a decade, with 51% of
public schools and 41% of private institutions unable to increase
revenue at or above Moody's projected 2% rate of inflation. Last
year, an estimated 49% and 39%, respectively, fell short.
Overall, public and private institutions forecast net tuition
revenue growth of 1.9% and 2.7%, respectively. Just a decade ago,
most schools regularly boosted net tuition revenue by upward of 5%
a year.
Melissa Korn The Wall Street Journal Good Signs for Renters
New figures offer the latest reminder of an apartment boom.
Housing starts fell in October because of a 15.5% drop in the
multifamily sector, which is notoriously volatile. But the broader
picture shows that apartments have been on a tear this year.
Construction of multifamily housing units--those with five units
or more--is running at its strongest 12-month pace since 1989.
Moreover, the share of those units being constructed as rentals is
at its highest since record-keeping began in 1974. More than 93% of
units in buildings with at least two units are being constructed as
rentals.
Multifamily construction is now higher than it was during the
peak in the previous housing cycle, reached in 2006. But back then,
far more of these units were being built as condominiums, not as
rentals.
Nick Timiraos Real Time Economics blog WSJ.com A Boost for
Wages?
President Barack Obama's move toward offering legal-worker
status to several million undocumented immigrants will send
unpredictable ripples through the U.S. economy, prompting many to
seek higher paying jobs and heightening wage competition in a
number of sectors, economist say.
Those studying the potential impact of the president's executive
order, announced Thursday night, point to the Reagan-era 1986
Immigration Reform and Control Act, which allowed around 1.7
million undocumented immigrants to become lawful permanent
residents and around one million farm workers to apply for a higher
level of legal status. The 1986 law had an almost immediate
labor-market impact, according to government research as well as
studies conducted by a number of economists, sociologists and
demographers.
Federal data showed that immigrants in farming and sales jobs
were the most likely to move to higher-paying work in different
industries.
By the time they became naturalized in the early 1990s, just 4%
of farm workers were in the same industry, while a quarter of those
workers had shifted over to construction and other labor jobs with
better pay, according to a study published in 2002 by the federal
agency that handled immigration policy.
Damian Paletta WSJ.com
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