Corporate ownership can mean cutting "unprofitable" services and shipping "profitable" services to powerful hospitals in other communities.
BA will find slots for more frequent flights by dropping some 60 short-haul, unprofitable services from crowded Heathrow and moving others to Gatwick.
On both counts, the Gulf carriers enjoy clear financial advantages over their American and European rivals, affording them a safety net which permits them to operate unprofitable services in order to gain market share.Transparency is another issue.
Hospital administrators and others warn of potential hospital closings, shutting down of unprofitable services like hospitalization for psychiatric care and less access to medical care for the most vulnerable if the cuts are too deep.
That said, Aer Lingus's retrenchment over the last two years — it has sharply reduced seat capacity on a number of European routes and eliminated some unprofitable services to North America — has left it more dependent than ever on commercial partnerships with other airlines, particularly United Airlines and JetBlue Airways.
But America's bizarre constitutional structure, which gives outsized influence to states with small populations, creates an incentive for Amtrak to maintain unprofitable services that keep influential senators happy.If its long-haul trains were cancelled, Amtrak would serve just 23 states, down from the current 46.
Bus services are provided by the private sector, under the government's competition laws, with cities able to seek tenders for unprofitable services.
To save money, Congress decided to renege on its promise to cover the costs of the Postal Service's unprofitable services.
The SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West union, which represents thousands of Daughters of Charity workers, warned that Prime Healthcare often cuts important but unprofitable services and places the bottom line ahead of patient care.
(2013) examine a different type of negative financial shock to hospitals investment losses from the stock market downturn in 2008 and find that hospitals adjusted by scaling back unprofitable services and reducing investment in information technology.
