After a Smooth Start, Health Enrollment Faces a Test

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. —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.

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. —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.

—Nick Timiraos Real Time Economics blog

WSJ.com

A Boost for Wages?

President Barack Obama’s move toward offering legalworker 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