Drug and device firms paid $3.5B to care providers

From research grants to travel junkets, drug and medical device companies paid doctors and leading hospitals billions of dollars last year, the government disclosed Tuesday in a new effort to spotlight potential ethical conflicts in medicine. Industry spent nearly $3.5 billion on such payments in the five-month period from August through December of last year, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which released data on 4.4 million payments.

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