"have a sign stating all the services are independently operated and you'll receive these separate bills" Those independently billed services must provide the

"have a sign stating all the services are independently operated and you'll receive these separate bills" Those independently billed services must provide the services without regard to whether they will be able to collect. There is no credit checking (obviously). I did some foresenic consulting for someone in a divorce. The physician had a large amount of a/r that had to be valued. Based on my memory they were easily writing off 25 to 35% of the charges they were billing for services. And this was in an affluent area. The non-paid for charges came from both individuals as well as insurance companies that didn't pay for various reasons. The physicians (a group) simply didn't have the time to pursue the charges. In some cases they would sell off the receivables in other cases they were just written off. In a traditional business having a credit loss like that (spread among many accounts not one account going bust) would be unthinkable year after year.