The managers found their own ways to profit. According to an eventual complaint from prosecutors in Milan, executives at the San Donato Group connived with their counterparts at major pharmaceutical companies8, including Novartis, Eli Lilly, and Bayer, to swindle the Lombardy system through price gouging on drugs. The hospitals received the drugs at a discount, and the executives pocketed the difference—some 10 million euros—while taxpayers reimbursed the hospitals at inflated prices.
