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SECTION E APPEARS INSIDE TODAY

Saturday, January 11, 2014 Northwest Herald

Page E3

Breaking news @ www.NWHerald.com

Business Journal editor: Brett Rowland • browland@shawmedia.com

8BUSINESS ROUNDUP

THE MARKETS

MCC to offer leadership training courses

7.71 16437.05

18.47 4174.67

4.24 1842.37

OIL

$92.71 a barrel +$1.05

THE STOCKS Stock

Abbott Labs AbbVie AGL Resources Allstate

Apple AptarGroup AT&T Bank of Montreal Baxter Berry Plastics Boeing Caterpillar CME Group Coca-Cola Comcast Covidien Dean Foods Dow Chemical Exelon Exxon Facebook Ford General Motors Google Hillshire IBM JPMorganChase Kohl’s Kraft Foods Group Live Nation McDonald’s Microsoft Modine Moto Solutions Office Depot Pepsi Pulte Homes Safeway Sears Holdings Snap-On Southwest Air. Supervalu Target Twitter United Contint. Wal-Mart Walgreen Waste Mgmt. Wintrust Fincl.

Change

39.57 50.90 47.05 54.09 532.94 68.05 33.62 65.46 70.01 23.57 141.90 90.51 76.49 40.13 53.54 69.67 17.20 42.71 27.17 100.52 57.94 16.07 40.03 1130.18 33.91 187.26 58.49 56.99 53.80 20.66 95.80 36.04 12.85 66.15 4.94 83.50 20.16 32.15 36.71 107.53 21.03 6.39 62.62 57.00 45.08 78.04 60.36 43.61 45.85

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COMMODITIES Metal

Change

Gold Silver Copper

1246.40 20.15 3.343

+17.00 +0.467 +0.044

Grain (cents per bushel) Close

Corn Soybeans Oats Wheat

432.75 1303.75 386.50 569.00

Livestock

Live cattle Feeder cattle Lean hogs

137.15 168.125 85.80

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+20.75 +7.50 -8.25 -15.25 Change

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AP photo

Record-keeping snags could complicate the start of care this month as millions of people begin using health plans that they purchased under President Barack Obama’s law. Among the paperwork orphans was cancer survivor Sharon Van Daele, who went back and forth between her insurer and the federal government for more than a week after her coverage was supposed to start, but her insurance card failed to arrive. Unable to get answers, she said it felt as if she had fallen into a black hole.

Left in limbo Some find health insurers have no record of them By RICARDO ALONSO ZALDIVAR and TOM MURPHY The Associated Press INDIANAPOLIS – Record-keeping snags could complicate the start of insurance coverage this month as people begin using policies they purchased under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Insurance companies are still trying to sort out cases of so-called health insurance orphans, customers for whom the government has a record that they enrolled, but the insurer does not. Government officials say the problem is real but under control, with orphan records being among the roughly 13,000 problem cases they are trying to resolve with insurers. But insurance companies are worried the process will grow more cumbersome as they deal with the flood of new customers who signed up in December as enrollment deadlines neared. More than 1 million people have signed up through the federal insurance market that serves 36 states. Officials contend the error rate for new signups is close to zero. Insurers, however, are less enthusiastic about the pace of the fixes. The companies also are seeing cases in

which the government has assigned the same identification number to more than one person, as well as socalled “ghost” files in which the insurer has an enrollment record but the government does not. But orphaned files – when the insurer has no record of enrollment – are particularly concerning because the companies have no automated way to identify the presumed policyholder. They say they have to manually compare the lists of enrollees the government sends them with their own records because the government never built an automated system that would do the work much faster. “It’s an ongoing concern,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans. “Health plans can’t process enrollments they haven’t received from the exchange.” Julie Bataille, communications director for the federal health care rollout, disputes the industry’s view. “We have fixed the issues that we knew were a problem, and we are now seeing nearly zero errors in the work moving forward,” she said. A federal “reconciliation” team, including technicians, deals directly with more than 300 insurers to

resolve signup problems, she said, while the government’s call center has caseworkers to help consumers directly. Insurers use the term “orphan” for the problematic files because they are referring to customers who have yet to find a home with the carrier they selected. The files have cropped up since enrollment began last fall through HealthCare.gov. The site was down an estimated 60 percent of the time in October. Since then, the front-end interaction between customers and the website has largely been fixed. But insurers worry that the backend problems will grow more acute as they process the wave of customers who signed up at the end of 2013. More than 2 million people had enrolled by the end of the year, either through HealthCare.gov or state-run websites. Aetna spokeswoman Susan Millerick said orphaned files were “manageable over the short term.” But she added that manually comparing enrollment files will not work over the long term and that the federal website needs a permanent fix to eliminate the possibility of orphaned files.

See LIMBO, page E2

Job growth contracted sharply in December By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER The Associated Press WASHINGTON – The weakest month of hiring in three years ended 2013 on a sluggish note and raised questions about whether the U.S. job market can sustain its recent strong gains. Employers added a scant 74,000 jobs in December after averaging 214,000 in the previous four months. Economists cautioned that cold weather likely played a role in the sharp slowdown. Many analysts said they would need to see more data before they could tell whether the job market had lost momentum. The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate fell from 7 percent in November to 6.7 percent, its lowest level since October 2008. But the drop occurred mostly because many Americans stopped looking for jobs. Once people without jobs stop looking for one, the government no longer counts them as unemployed. The proportion of people either working or looking for work fell to 62.8 percent, matching a nearly 36-year low. Last month’s expiration of extended unemployment benefits for 1.3 million long-term unemployed could accelerate that trend

McHENRY – McHenry County College is offering a supervisory leadership training program later this month. The Developmental Dimensions International’s Supervisory Leadership Series will be facilitated by DDI certified facilitator Betty Hartwig from 8 a.m. to noon Tuesdays, Jan. 28 through March 18 at the Shah Center, 4100 W. Shamrock Lane. Participants will learn how to strengthen interpersonal skills. Series topics include: essentials of leadership, getting started as new leaders, resolving conflict, delegating for results, setting performance expectations, reviewing performance progress, coaching for improvement and achieving your leadership potential. Participants can register for individual courses or the entire series. Individual courses cost $165. The eight-course series costs $1,122. Use course ID: NTL S22 004 to register. In addition, an evening series is scheduled from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Wednesdays March 5 through April 30 (course ID: NTL S22 005). To register, call MCC’s Registration Office at 815455-8588. For information, contact the Shah Center at 815-455-8593 or shahcenter@ mchenry.edu.

Falling prices could mean less corn in Illinois PEORIA – Falling corn prices and questions about ethanol demand could lead Illinois farmers to plant fewer acres of corn this year. Instead, farmers are likely to use some of that acreage to plant soybeans, said Patrick Kirchhofer, manager of the Peoria County Farm Bureau. The shift comes after several years of increasing corn production fueled by higher prices. Nationwide, analysts have called last year’s crop a record-breaker, at more than 14 billion bushels. But the excess corn has pushed prices down from $8 a bushel in 2012 to about $4. At the same time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed reducing the amount of ethanol required to be blended into the nation’s fuel, which could weaken demand for corn. The corn-based fuel currently uses up to 40 percent of the nation’s corn crop. Farmer Ross Pauli of Edwards said he was worried that the EPA proposal, if approved, would hurt the farm economy. He’s urging other farmers to share their views with lawmakers.

Former Bank of Israel head gets Fed nod

the 6.7 percent unemployment rate – a drop of more than a full percentage point since 2013 began – will eventually lead many employers to raise wages. “It doesn’t change what they’re thinking,” Naroff said of the Fed. Many economists said it would be premature to conclude from Friday’s report that the economy is weakening.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama intends to nominate Stanley Fischer, a former head of the Bank of Israel, to be vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, replacing Janet Yellen, who is ascending to the central bank’s chairmanship. Fischer, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, is considered a leading expert on monetary policy. He was a long-time professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Departing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was one of his students. Obama also is nominating Lael Brainard as a Fed governor. Brainard served as the undersecretary for international affairs at Treasury during Obama’s first term. She left the administration recently. He also is renominating Jerome Powell to the Fed for a second term.

See JOB GROWTH, page E2

– From local and wire reports

AP file photo

Luis Mendez (left), 23, and Maurice Mike, 23, wait in line at a job fair held by the Miami Marlins at Marlins Park in Miami. The weakest month of hiring in three years ended 2013 on a sluggish note and raised concerns about whether the job market can sustain its recent strong gains. if many of them stop looking for work. Beneficiaries had been required to look for work to receive unemployment checks. The stock market fell in early trading. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 34 points in latemorning trading. And the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.88 percent from 2.97 late Thursday – a drop that is normally a sign of a slowing economy. It’s unclear whether the

sharp hiring slowdown might lead the Federal Reserve to rethink its plan to slow its stimulus efforts. The Fed decided last month to pare its monthly bond purchases, which have been designed to lower interest rates to spur borrowing and spending. “I don’t think the Fed is going to be panicked by this,” said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors. Naroff suggested that