Pharma Paid Physicians $6.5B in 2014 – Looking into the Open Payments Dataset
My favorite tidbit about pharma payments to physicians comes from Ben Goldacre's book, Bad Pharma.  Based on a survey, most physicians think that the money doctors receive from pharma definitely affects their prescribing choices, HOWEVER, that only applies to other doctors.  Each doctor is convinced that they are perfectly unbiased and that they can receive money without having their opinion swayed, but other doctors are not as strong willed.