Center for American Progress Center for American Progress
Issues Domestic & Economy Health Care

Creative Accounting Could Lower Health Costs

In 2003, back when Continental Airlines (Charts) was losing its shirt, Gordon Bethune, its salty CEO, got sick of hearing that upstarts like JetBlue (Charts) had created a new business model that would bury the industry's dinosaurs. So he had his CFO recompute Continental's earnings assuming the company had (like JetBlue) a much younger workforce - and thus much lower health, pension and related costs.

Read more here.

This article was originally published in Fortune.

To speak with our experts on this topic, please contact:

For print, John Neurohr, Deputy Press Secretary
202.481.8182 or jneurohr@americanprogress.org

For radio, Andrea Purse, Deputy Director of Media Strategy
202.446.8429 or apurse@americanprogress.org

For TV, Sean Gibbons, Director of Media Strategy
202.682.1611 or sgibbons@americanprogress.org

For web, Erin Lindsay, Online Marketing Manager
202.741.6397 or elindsay@americanprogress.org

Related Articles

A Moral Prescription, by Lindsay Barrett

The Price Isn't Right: The Facts on Affordable Health Care, by Karen Davenport, Morgan Mulvenon, Garrett Groves, Avinash Kinra, Laurie Seremetis

Why Does Health Care Cost So Much?, by Karen Davenport

Consumers Suffer as Health Insurers Consolidate, by David Balto

Making Medicare Better for Patients and Doctors, by Karen Davenport

Also by Matt Miller

Nationalize the Schools (...A Little)!, February 26, 2008

First, Kill All the School Boards, January 23, 2008

What Makes History Happen? , September 26, 2007