Alere subsidiary Arriva Medical routinely gave Medicare beneficiaries glucometers they didn’t need and billed the government for them, a recently unsealed lawsuit claims.

Abbott subsidiary Alere is paying $33.2m to settle allegations the company knowingly allowed hospitals to bill for tests performed using unreliable diagnostics marketed by the company. It's one of the first times that US DoJ has held a company responsible for false claims filed due to faulty test results.

Third-quarter device financing at $2.38 billion – almost half of that amount from CooperSurgical's $1.1 billion bridge loan – was double the Q2 total, while device acquisitions showed a steep decrease at $3.38 billion versus Q2's $33.4 billion. Diagnostics fundraising also was up in the third quarter, reaching $2.4 billion (a 133% increase over Q2) mostly from Thermo Fisher Scientific's $1.5 billion follow-on offering, which accounted for 63% of the total. In line with the previous quarter's $1.7 billion in M&A, Q3 diagnostics acquisitions had an aggregate value of $1.8 billion, led by Konica Minolta's $1 billion buy of Ambry Genetics.