Did
the VA Pay Out Bonuses for Screwing Veterans? - (www.thedailybeast.com) The
VA health care system has so many perverse incentives that it may have actually
given rewards to those who treated veterans the worst. As the scandal in the
Department of Veterans Affairs widens, new attention is being paid to the
bonuses doled out to the leaders of VA hospitals where dozens of vets died—and
whether the promise of performance pay led administrators to cover up how long their
patients were waiting for care. There’s no proof yet that the VA employees who
placed veterans on secret waiting lists—where some of them died in line—were
motivated by bonuses. But multiple officials at the institutions under
investigation have received tens of thousands in bonuses in the recent past. Though
the bonuses are designed to reward exceptional performance, they can
potentially create perverse incentives. Pay rewards tied to reporting metrics
that are susceptible to manipulation could be encouraging VA executives and
employees to focus on massaging statistics—at the expense of providing real
services for veterans.
Grad
Students Could Win Big as Obama Slashes Debt Payments - (www.businessweek.com) So
in practice, borrowers who were once excluded—as many as 5 million, according
to the early reports—will be able to see their monthly payments cut by as much
as one-third. But the biggest windfall will probably be for people who take on a lot of debt,
such as business and law students. That’s for two reasons: First, as Jason
Delisle of the New America Foundation told Bloomberg
Businessweek in 2012: “Undergraduates can’t borrow enough, so the change
[from IBR to PAYE] is very marginal to them. If you’re only paying $20 a month,
a 33 percent reduction in monthly payments is not that big a deal. But if you
are paying $800 a month, a 33 percent reduction is a big deal.” The second
reason why grad students may benefit the most is that PAYE has more generous
loan forgiveness terms than IBR. Under PAYE, the remaining balance of the
student loan is forgiven after 20 years of on-time payments, rather than 25
years under IBR.
Buy
a House or Pay Off College? $1.2 Trillion Student Debt Heats Up in Capital - (www.bloomberg.com) Jennifer
Day spends 12 percent of her monthly take-home pay on debt that funded a
master’s degree in urban and regional planning, money she’d rather be saving
toward a home. “I spend $364 a month for student loans,” said Day, 33, who
conducts market research for the hospitality industry at a consulting firm in
New Orleans. “To me, that is a down payment or ultimately savings down the
line.” Under a bill sponsored by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, Day would save about $75 a month on her
payments. The legislation, which could reach the Senate floor as soon as
tomorrow, would let borrowers with federal and private loans refinance their
balances at lower interest rates. Alleviating the burden on student-loan
borrowers, who have amassed more than $1.2 trillion in debt, has been a focus
this week of Democrats concerned about their drag on the economy. President Barack Obama issued an executive order yesterday to
expand a program easing student-loan payments. He also endorsed Warren’s bill,
which would help former graduate students like Day, whose federal loans
typically carry higher rates than those on undergraduate loans, with some as
high as 8.5 percent.
A
Little Student Loan Debt Never Hurt Anyone - (www.bloomberg.com) Student
loans seem to be the same sort of evergreen political winner for Democrats that
tax cuts are for Republicans. Every month seems to bring another plan to fiddle
with student loans to make them less expensive for the students and more
expensive for the government. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has a bill
out that would let student loan holders refinance at lower rates; President
Barack Obama is signing an executive order to open up especially generous
income-based repayment terms to millions more students, even if they don’t have
a financial hardship. My friend Mark Kleiman thinksthat
anyone who is paying attention to items like these has no choice but to become
a fanatical partisan Democrat. Well, I have been paying quite a lot of
attention to student loan issues, and I haven’t yet taken the step of becoming
a Democrat, much less a fanatical partisan one. I haven’t even taken the lesser
step of endorsing these plans, which I think are a bad idea.
Veterans' Three-Month
Wait for Doctors Pressures Congress - (www.bloomberg.com) Another
report of delays in medical care for U.S. military veterans -- this one showing
57,400 have waited more than three months to see a doctor -- is adding pressure
on Congress to come up with a legislative fix. An internal audit released
yesterday by the Department of Veterans Affairs showed that an additional
63,900 veterans who enrolled in the VA health system in the past 10 years
haven’t received doctors’ appointments. The report comes as the Senate is set to
advance bipartisan legislation to revamp the system. “American veterans are
depending on us completing this legislation, ensuring that our veterans are
getting the care and resources they are promised by a grateful nation,” Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said on the chamber floor
yesterday after the report was published.
Sprint,
T-Mobile Said Near Price, Termination Fee Accord - (www.bloomberg.com)
Microsoft Faces China Backlash to Windows Amid U.S. Spat - (www.bloomberg.com)
Microsoft Faces China Backlash to Windows Amid U.S. Spat - (www.bloomberg.com)
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