But some vulnerable patients are probably going to feel a little cheated. Consider this coverage wrinkle:

Suppose your cancer is in remission. You had to quit your job while you were having chemotherapy, and your employer coverage ran out. You cant find a private insurer wholl take you, but youre lucky to live in a state that has its own high-risk pool. Still, you have to struggle to pay the premiums, well above standard insurance because sicker people are in the group. Yet as the federal program is designed, you wouldnt be able to switch over and take advantage of significant savings.

The reason: You have to be uninsured to qualify for the new plan.

“Its awkward,” said John Rother, senior strategist for AARP, which supported the overhaul. “None of us would want to see the program lock people in to the more expensive existing coverage, but to switch over all those people would have definitely boosted the cost, and Congress was looking for ways to minimize it.”

That means some 200,000 patients now enrolled in more than 30 state high-risk insurance pools will be stuck paying higher premiums. Many are on tight budgets, drawing down their savings and borrowing from family members.

Premiums in the new federal pool are expected to be 10 percent to 50 percent lower than current state rates, said Richard Popper, who directs Marylands program. Co-payments and deductibles are also expected to be considerably lower. But the only way current beneficiaries could get the federal coverage would be to drop out of their state pool and go uninsured for six months.

“That would be a very risky thing to do,” said Stephen Finan, policy director for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. “Can you afford to go without coverage for six months in the hopes of getting a better price? Its a big gamble.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius calls the federal risk pool a first step toward ending insurance discrimination against people with health problems. But HHS officials say Congress wrote the rules and theres nothing they can do to open up the program to people now in state pools. The federal pool is designed for the uninsured.

The program will be temporary, a bridge to 2014, when denial of coverage for medical reasons will be against the law, and new insurance markets will offer taxpayer subsidized coverage for millions. Number crunchers at Medicare estimate that 375,000 people will sign up this year.

Sebelius says she expects the plan will operate alongside state risk pools where such programs exist - making premium comparisons inevitable. Shes also planning a national program to serve people in states that have no risk pools, or opt not to participate.

Georgia insurance commissioner John Oxendine announced this week that his state would not. Oxendine, a Republican running for governor, questioned the constitutionality of the federal overhaul law, and said he thinks joining the new risk pool could end up costing state taxpayers money.

A recent report by Medicare economists warns that the program could go through $4 billion in its first year, and run out of money as early as 2011.

“These are some of the sickest people in the country, and therefore their costs would be dramatically higher - yet the law requires that they be subsidized to standard rates,” said Robert Laszewski, a health care industry consultant. “I think theyve given (Sebelius) an impossible task.”

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The IRS also erroneously issued about $4.7 million in tax credits meant for people who bought plug-in electric cars. The new tax breaks were enacted as part of the massive economic recovery package passed last year.

“Our report concludes that the IRS is having a mixed filing season this year,” George said. “On the one hand, they are having difficulty implementing many of the changes created by the passage of the laws designed to stimulate the economy. On the other hand, the news is not all bad as the IRS is detecting and stopping more erroneous refunds this year.”

The report covers returns processed as of March 5. At the time, the IRS had received about 61 million returns. The agency expects to receive about 140 million individual returns this year.

“Any time you have major tax changes you will see some confusion over it,” said IRS spokesman Terry Lemons. The IRS is doing “everything we can” to work through problems and process returns quickly.

The stimulus package enacted last year presented many challenges for taxpayers and the IRS, making an already complicated tax system even more complex. There were tax credits for qualified families who buy new homes or make energy improvements to existing ones, as well as tax breaks to help pay college tuition or buy new cars.

The Making Work Pay tax credit was President Barack Obamas signature tax break in the package. It provides individuals with up to $400 and couples up to $800.

The homebuyer tax credit was so popular that Congress extended and expanded it in November. Buyers who have owned their current homes at least five years are eligible, subject to income limits, for tax credits of up to $6,500. First-time homebuyers - or people who havent owned homes in the previous three years - can get up to $8,000. To qualify, buyers have to sign purchase agreements before May 1 and close before July 1.

The IRS expects half the people claiming the homebuyer credit not to include proper documentation, such as a settlement statement, and that will delay refunds, according to the report.

As of April 2, the average refund was $2,950, up about $255 over last year, Lemons said. The fastest way to get a refund: file electronically and have the refund deposited directly into a bank account, which takes about 10 days.

Refunds can take six to eight weeks for last-minute filers who use paper returns and receive checks, Lemons said.

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WaMus pay system rewarded loan officers for the volume and speed of the subprime mortgage loans they closed on. Extra bonuses even went to loan officers who overcharged borrowers on their loans or levied stiff penalties for prepayment, according to the report being released by the investigative panel of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Testifying at a hearing of the subcommittee Tuesday are former Washington Mutual CEO Kerry Killinger, ex-President and Chief Operating Officer Stephen Rotella, and David Schneider, who was the highest-ranking executive in the banks home lending operation. Two former chief risk officers and an internal auditor are also due to appear.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the subcommittee chairman, said Monday the panel wont decide until after the hearings on Tuesday and Friday whether to make a formal referral to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. Justice, the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission opened investigations into Washington Mutual soon after its collapse in the fall of 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.

The new report by the Senate investigators said the top WaMu producers, loan officers and sales executives who made high-risk loans or packaged them into securities for sale to Wall Street, were eligible for the banks Presidents Club, with trips to swank resorts - like Maui in 2005.

Fueled by the housing boom, Seattle-based Washington Mutuals sales to investors of packaged subprime mortgage securities leapt from $2.5 billion in 2000 to $29 billion in 2006. The 119-year-old thrift, with $307 billion in assets, failed in September 2008. It was sold for $1.9 billion to JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a deal brokered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

WaMu was one of the biggest makers of so-called “option ARM” mortgages, which allowed borrowers to make payments so low that loan debt actually increased every month.

The Senate subcommittee investigated the Washington Mutual failure for a year and a half. It focused on the thrift as a case study for the financial crisis that brought the recession and the loss of jobs or homes for millions of Americans.

Senior executives of the bank were aware of the prevalence of fraud, the Senate investigators found.

Washington Mutual “was one of the worst,” Levin told reporters Monday. “This was a Main Street bank that got taken in by these Wall Street profits that were offered to it.”

The investors who bought the mortgage securities from Washington Mutual werent informed of the fraudulent practices, the Senate investigators found. WaMu “dumped the polluted water” of toxic mortgage securities into the stream of the U.S. financial system, Levin said.

In some cases, sales associates in WaMu offices in California fabricated loan documents, cutting and pasting false names on borrowers bank statements. The companys own probe in 2005, three years before the bank collapsed, found that two top producing offices - in Downey and Montebello, Calif. - had levels of fraud exceeding 58 percent and 83 percent of the loans. Employees violated the banks policies on verifying borrowers qualifications and reviewing loans.

Washington Mutual was repeatedly criticized over the years by its internal auditors and federal regulators for sloppy lending that resulted in high default rates by borrowers, according to the report. Violations were so serious that in 2007, Washington Mutual closed its big affiliate Long Beach Mortgage Co. as a separate entity and took over its subprime lending operations.

In late 2006, Washington Mutuals primary regulator, the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision, allowed the bank an additional year to comply with new, stricter guidelines for issuing subprime loans.

According to an internal bank e-mail cited in the report, Washington Mutual would have lost about a third of the volume of its subprime loans if it applied the stricter requirements.

Jennifer Zuccarelli, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase, declined to comment Monday on the subcommittee report.

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And, a quarter of homeowners who want to sell their current home and buy another say they need to make the move in order to lower their monthly expenses due to financial problems.

The survey, conducted for Move Inc., found wide-ranging concerns about the financial condition of homeowners in a challenging economy, but also unearthed evidence of increased demand among investors in residential real estate.

“Concerns around employment and their overall economic situation are causing many people to wait until the economy improves before they commit to one of the largest purchases theyll most likely make in their lives,” said Errol Samuelson, chief revenue officer for Move, which runs the Realtor.com and Move.com Web sites.

A stronger housing market will be an important part of the nations economic recovery. As home sales and prices rise, consumer optimism usually follows suit, leading homeowners to feel wealthier and make them more comfortable spending.

Despite economic concerns, investor interest in the housing market is growing, according to the survey.

About 17 percent of potential home buyers say they plan to purchase a home in the near future as an investment. Thats three times the investor interest seen in March 2009.

Also, investor interest in purchasing a foreclosed property to fix up and resell rose from 11.3 percent in October 2009 to 16 percent in March, a 42 percent increase.

Strong demand persists among first time homebuyers, the survey showed.

One in five consumers say they plan to purchase a home in the next 12 months to five years. Of those, half are first-time buyers, with men being somewhat more interested in entering the housing market as a first-time buyer than women.

First-time buyers have until April 30 to sign a contract for a home purchase and qualify for a tax credit of up to $8,000.

The telephone poll, which included 1,004 interviews, was conducted in March by GfK Custom Research North America. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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Five Southeast Asian economies that contracted last year - Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Brunei - also are set to return to growth, together with Hong Kong, Mongolia and Taiwan, the bank said in its economic outlook.

In 2011, GDP growth across the region is seen easing back to 7.3 percent.

Investment is expected to remain strong and private consumption improve as projected growth this year and next lifts domestic demand, boosting consumer price inflation to about 4 percent, the bank said.

The fragile recovery still could be derailed by a premature withdrawal of stimulus, a sharp rise in commodity prices, persistent global financial imbalances and deteriorating debt positions in some countries, said ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda.

Asias recovery is attracting large capital flows, the perils of which were made clear in the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, he said.

“Volatile capital flows could again have serious implications for exchange rates and money supply,” Kuroda said.

“As it exits the worst effects of this crisis, therefore, developing Asia must remain faithful to its tradition of sound and responsible fiscal and monetary policies,” he said.

The bank proposed monetary, exchange rate and fiscal policies to enable the region to adapt to the post-crisis world. It said that while price stability is the overriding objective, there needs to be better coordination between fiscal regulation and monetary policy to avert a homegrown financial crisis.

“After all, the combination of lax monetary policy and inadequate financial regulation contributed to inflating the U.S. housing market bubble that the immediate catalyst of the global financial crisis,” the bank said.

Excessive foreign exchange market intervention should be reduced in favor of greater flexibility, and capital controls could help guard against foreign exchange volatility, it said.

Developing Asia refers to 44 countries and territories from the Pacific to Central Asia, excluding Japan.

On the Net:

Asian Development Bank: http://www.adb.org

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Senior Chinese officials repeatedly sidestepped major issues roiling the global economy. Asked about the Chinese currency - which Washington wants to see rise in value to right trade imbalances - the central bank governor said now was not the time to discuss it. When it comes to regulating the risky Wall Street practices that contributed to the global economic meltdown, Chinas chief banking regulator sheathed his former critiques and instead called for teamwork and more financial prudence.

“I dont want to poke my nose into other peoples courtyards,” banking regulator Liu Mingkang said Sunday at the Boao Forum for Asia, a government-sponsored annual gathering for the political and economic elite on tropical Hainan island.

The meeting featured the now usual Chinese calls against trade protectionism in the West, including one from Chinas vice president and presumptive next leader, Xi Jinping.

But the tenor was a far cry from last years Boao meeting, held at the depths of the economic crisis. Then, Liu and others directed barbs at the U.S., calling for a new financial world order and indirectly threatening that China might stop buying U.S. Treasury notes that help finance Washingtons growing deficit. The elbowing continued for much of the year as Beijing resisted U.S. and European calls to halt North Koreas and Irans nuclear programs and take bolder steps to curb the threat of climate change.

While the turnaround in Beijings attitude may be temporary, the change points to indecision among the leadership about Chinas role in the world, especially its crucial but fraught ties with the U.S., and about keeping the Chinese economy humming amid a still anemic global recovery.

“We are in a time of reassessment by Beijing about Chinas foreign policy,” said Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based political analyst. “There is no overarching slogan or concept guiding the decision-making process in foreign affairs these days here.”

Though Washington likely welcomes the toned-down rhetoric, Chinas overall reticence befuddles the U.S. and others looking to Beijing to provide constructive leadership. The countrys economy, after all, will soon be the second largest and is increasingly entwined in the world order.

Though China warded off the worst of the economic turmoil, it now feels the aftereffects of its remedies, $1.8 trillion in bank lending and government stimulus.

With the economy awash in money, housing prices are soaring and inflation is rising. The domestic demand created by supercharged investment may flag as the stimulus eases, leaving China still partly in need of export markets in the U.S. and Europe. The Chinese currency - which the government pegged to the U.S. dollar at the start of the crisis - has been attacked by the U.S., Europe and other trading partners as undervalued, thereby allowing China to flood the world with cheap exports.

Worries are growing, too, that some of the bank loans may sour. Liu, the banking regulator, announced an aggressive plan Sunday to assess the safety of loans to local government-backed investment companies.

Those problems loom as Chinese President Hu arrives in Washington on Monday to attend a summit on nuclear safety. Its an issue Beijing dislikes being out front on. With a nuclear arsenal estimated at about 100 warheads, China says the U.S. and Russia should lead on disarmament, given their huge stockpiles. Beijing has also been reluctant to push ally and neighbor North Korea or trade partner Iran, a willing supplier of oil and gas to China.

At the Boao meeting, senior Chinese officials parried calls from Geithners predecessor, Henry Paulson, among others to mount a higher-profile, energetic response to global problems. Central bank governor Zhou Xiaoquan said Beijing still followed three-decade-old policy guidance “to keep a low profile” on foreign affairs.

“The Chinese voices may become higher and higher,” Zhou said. “But we respect the global players from other countries.”

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But Wall Street analysts who study key stock index levels say all the attention paid to 11,000 is more like a big distraction. They worry that investors are ignoring another number at their peril: The surprisingly low volume of trading. As stocks have risen over the past year, the volume reflects the vulnerability of a rally riding on the shoulders of relatively few participants.

And thats given pause even to the bulls.

“It worries a lot of us,” says Wellington Shields Frank Gretz, a technical analyst who specializes in pinpointing market levels at which stocks might suddenly rise or fall. He wonders whether the volume signals that the rally could soon peter out, like the big surges that preceded steep declines in the 1930s in the U.S. and in Japan more recently.

Louise Yamada, a 29-year veteran of technical analysis who heads an eponymous firm in New York, says shes not just concerned but confused.

“Why is the market going up?” she asks. “You usually dont see advances without volume.”

The widely cited Dow index, which tracks stocks of 30 companies, is up 70 percent from its lows of more than a year ago. The climb has been one of the strongest in history, and it may herald a strong recovery. But its been propelled by relatively few trades.

The 200-day moving average volume on the New York Stock Exchange is now at 1.2 billion shares, down from 1.6 billion, or nearly 25 percent, a year ago.

In other words, if there is wisdom in crowds, the stock market is getting dumber.

One reason volume is lower: Main Street investors have largely stayed out of the market, abandoning it to hedge funds, pension funds and other professional investors. Last year, individuals, as tracked by mutual fund flows, yanked $14 billion from stock mutual funds.

Bulls argue that the Dow breaching 11,000 might convince ordinary investors that the rally will last. And that will bring a flood of money into the market, pushing indexes higher.

But Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Dan Wantrobski isnt convinced.

On that front, there are signs of hope.

Last week the Labor Department reported 162,000 jobs were created in March, the most in three years. The unemployment rate was unchanged, at 9.7 percent.

Another boost to the outlook came Thursday from retailers: Sales at stores open at least a year rose 9 percent last month.

And, of course, there are plenty of other indicators of stock market health besides volume.

Technical analysts will make your head dizzy with their talk of “double tops,” “double bottoms” and “Fibonacci retracements.” Some of them prefer to make the case for a bull market.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission will weigh in Wednesday by proposing Wall Street firms that package and sell asset-backed securities be required to provide fuller disclosures on them.

The disclosures would include information on every underlying loan in a package. For example: What type of mortgage loan was involved? Were complete documents required from the borrower? Or was it a “no-doc” or “liar loan”?

The idea is to give investors more information to better judge the securities risk. That would reduce reliance on the Wall Street credit rating agencies. The three big agencies - Moodys Investors Service, Standard & Poors and Fitch Ratings - were widely criticized for failing to give investors adequate warning of the risks in subprime mortgage securities that triggered the financial crisis.

The SEC commissioners are expected to propose the new rules at a public meeting Wednesday. The rules could be formally adopted after a public comment period, possibly with changes.

A key question as lawmakers and regulators look to craft new rules is whether the firms that issue the securities should have to hold a portion of those investments on their own books.

With some “skin in the game,” the thinking goes, Wall Street firms would be more careful to ensure that borrowers are properly screened. Experts say it was the lack of that “skin” that enabled a system in which the mortgage bundles were whisked from investor to investor, with no one assuming the risk until the roof caved in.

Provisions in the House and Senate versions of legislation to overhaul financial regulation would require the “securitizers” to keep some of the risk themselves.

Another idea is for regulators to set an industrywide lending standard governing minimum down payments, borrowers debt levels and other requirements. That has drawn opposition from financial industry interests.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has floated a proposal to require new standards for the lending industry. Asset-backed securities would have to meet the standards to maintain a guarantee that they wouldnt be seized from a bank by the government if the bank failed.

“These reforms will help restore investor confidence … and prevent a recurrence of the crisis we are now working through,” FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said last month.

But industry interests maintain it would make banks skittish about investing in any mortgage-backed securities.

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AP Real Estate Writer Alan Zibel contributed to this report.

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The review by Kotzs office found there have been very few payments made under the program, which is limited to insider trading cases. Only a total $159,537 has been paid to five people since the program began in 1989.

Few applications for bounties have come in over the same 20-year period for a little-known program, the report said.

The report also found:

- The application process for bounties needs to be made more user-friendly. Applications should be more promptly and fully reviewed by SEC staff.

- The SEC needs to put in procedures to help the staff assess the information provided by whistleblowers to determine whether awards are merited. The criteria for judging bounty applications are vague and not subject to judicial review.

- A communication plan should be developed to inform the public and SEC staff about the bounty program.

- The SEC should adopt practices of the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service regarding applications for bounties, analysis of whistleblower information, tracking of tips and complaints, and record keeping.

The SEC already “has begun to take steps to correct the deficiencies,” the report notes.

SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami agreed with all the reports recommendations, Kotz said in a memo.

The report said there is evidence that bounties “are an effective tool to encourage whistleblowers to come forward.”

The agency has asked Congress to expand its authority to pay bounties for whistleblower information related to any kind of case that leads to enforcement action bringing fines over $1 million. The legislative proposal is being considered by the House and Senate.

In reports by his office issued last year, Kotz chronicled in detail how the SEC bungled five investigations of Madoffs business between June 1992 and December 2008, when the prominent money manager confessed the scheme to his sons. Kotz found that the agencys enforcement staff lacked adequate guidance on how to properly analyze complaints, and therefore failed to thoroughly review a complaint on Madoff brought to them in 2001 by private fraud investigator Harry Markopolos.

Over the 16-year period, the SEC received six “substantive complaints that raised significant red flags” regarding Madoffs operations, Kotzs investigation found. The agency also received complaints from a number of other sources, all containing specific information that called for a thorough examination of Madoffs business, the inquiry found. It said SEC enforcement staff rejected whistleblowers offers to provide additional evidence.

Madoff pleaded guilty in March 2009. He is serving a 150-year sentence in federal prison in North Carolina for what could be the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, with investor losses estimated so far at $13 billion to $19 billion - at least 13 times the SECs request to Congress for its entire budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

Madoffs epic fraud destroyed thousands of peoples life savings, wrecked charities and jolted investor confidence during the worst days of the financial crisis. Ordinary people as well as Hollywood celebrities, big hedge funds and international banks lost money investing with Madoff.

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But U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said the best sign that recovery was under way in Haiti would be an uptick in private investment.

“There need to be real investments that are really sustainable,” Holmes told The Associated Press. “Given half a chance this country can recover.”

Government-estimated death tolls from the quake - which rose without explanation ahead of the conference - range from 217,000 to 300,000 people. Most of the estimated 1.3 million people left homeless are still sheltering on broken streets, hillsides and riverbeds.

The effort to attract private investment is being led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, who since before the quake has been encouraging private companies to provide jobs in a country where 80 percent of people live on less than $2 a day.

As co-chair of the commission that will oversee the $5.3 billion in near-term international aid pledged Wednesday, his role in Haiti will only grow.

“Were going to have to create a financial system,” Clinton told the conference. “Haiti could become the first completely wireless country in the Caribbean. Haiti could become the first completely self-sufficient country in energy.”

Reginald Boulos, a Haitian business magnate and chamber of commerce president, said investment was possible but that improvements in infrastructure are needed with other changes.

“I talk to a lot of foreign investors: hotel chains, energy companies. They want to invest in Haiti,” Boulos said after the speech. “They want to see a climate change in the business environment. They want to see a decrease of corruption … (and) a better functioning government.”

Projects already were being announced during the conference.

The Coca-Cola Company unveiled a $7.5 million, five-year project to foster mango production through a new Odwalla jucie product called Haiti Hope Mango Lime-Aid. Proceeds will be reinvested to help growers.

Trilogy International Partners CEO Brad Horwitz said the Washington state-based telecom could invest millions to expand its Voila cell phone brand, if investment conditions are right. He said the company is considering a bid for the damaged public phone utility Telecommunications dHaiti, or Teleco, which was under privatization talks before the quake.

At the start of the one-day conference, Haitian President Rene Preval asked donors to focus on education and help the countrys 9 million people provide for their own future.

Minutes later, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the United States pledge of $1.15 billion over the next two years, and Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign affairs chief, announced the EUs pledge equivalent to more than $1.6 billion.

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Associated Press Writers Matthew Lee and Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report from the United Nations.

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