Article

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.

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Authors

Matt Miller

Senior Fellow

Departments

Economic Policy

We work to address the deep inequities in our economy to ensure that all Americans can live secure and stable lives.

Health Policy

The Health Policy department advances health coverage, health care access and affordability, public health and equity, social determinants of health, and quality and efficiency in health care payment and delivery.