In a very thorough and revealing analysis of statistical industry payment data, ProPublica disclosed that more than 2,500 physicians have received at least half a million dollars apiece from drugmakers and medical device companies in the past five years alone, while more than 700 of those doctors received at least $1 million, and that doesn't include money for research or royalties from inventions.

In their article, the authors note that their previous analysis in 2013, which found out that 1 doctor had made $1 million and 21 doctors had made over $500,000 for the same reasons, was expected to be a wake-up call for more effective scrutiny, oversight, and challenges to these payments. Instead, these types of payments have become much more commonplace.

To identify the latest pharma millionaires and other spending trends, ProPublica analyzed more than 56 million payments made from 2014 to 2018 — the first five full years of the federal Open Payments initiative, which requires companies to publicly disclose the payments as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.