Here are three of the top financial news stories of the week, gathered from around the web:
It’s too easy to lose your health insurance
I jeopardized my family’s health insurance because of a missed email, Dr. Danielle Ofri said in the New York Times. I got stuck on an unwanted plan last year because I missed the open enrollment period. How is it possible? Easy. A spam filter on my email “apparently scanned all emails from HR,” and with my job, kids, and patients, I had lost track of sign-up dates. Worse yet, the “basic plan” I received by default is reserved for employees, which meant that my spouse and children were left without health insurance. “The reason given for this bureaucratic maneuvering is that eligibility must be verified every year so as not to award services to someone who is not eligible.” But it’s awfully easy for qualified Americans to lose their coverage.
Real Estate Blues: “Staying Alive to 25”
Mortgage companies are so desperate that they are laying off brokers and demanding bonuses in return, Ben Eisen and Andrew Ackerman said in the Wall Street Journal. “The mortgage industry is notoriously boom or bust,” but with rates near 8% and applications drying up, “this crisis is particularly severe – and it’s only just beginning.” Guaranteed Rate and its affiliates are telling former employees they must return their signing bonuses, which in some cases exceeded $1 million — back when “mortgage bankers were taking money.” A broker was dismissed “one month before” the date on which the employer could no longer recover the bonus. “At the recent Mortgage Bankers Association annual conference, a mantra repeated by a few speakers was ‘Stay alive until age 25,’ at which point things might get a little better.”
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A wave of CEO departures
The great resignation of CEOs is only getting worse, Jo Constantz said in Bloomberg. “More than 1,400 CEOs” of companies monitored by the executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas “left their positions since the start of the year until September”, an increase of almost 50% compared to the same period last year. This is the highest rate of departures recorded in this period since the company began tracking it in 2002. One theory: “Exhaustion may now be catching up with executives, even if the overall rate of resignations among U.S. employees are returning to their pre-pandemic norm. HR experts also say companies tend to “prefer the stability of a steady hand on the wheel” during times of great uncertainty, like the pandemic, and are now making long-delayed changes.
This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you’re interested in learning more, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.
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