About 12 senior staff members at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services gave five Wall Street investors a private, two-hour hearing in 2009 during which the insiders asked about the reimbursement prospects for medical devices they’d backed or were considering, according to the Project on Government Oversight.
The meeting, brought to light after CMS staffer who attended filed an ethics complaint, is apparently a routine practice at the massive federal agency charged with administering the government health insurance programs.