Debt collection is big business for hospitals

Some of the country's biggest hospital companies are facing slim profit margins on actual patient care, but have managed to pad their bottom lines with debt-collection businesses, Bloomberg reports. Tenet, for example, is selling off hospitals to help reduce its debt burden, but keeps those hospitals as customers of its debt-collection arm.

Go deeper:

As Axios' Bob Herman has reported, hospitals are also

pulling in a lot of money

on Wall Street — from investments, stocks, bonds, credit default swaps and accounting gains from mergers and acquisitions.