June 13, 2006

BY BRIAN BASHN

ARKANSAS
DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Fred Nazem, the investor behind several multibillion-dol-lar health-care
companies, has tapped Gov. Mike Huckabee to serve on the board of directors for
his latest project — a
physi­cian referral service. The com­pany,
Flagship Patient Advocates, will go public later this month.

Flagship Patient Advocates connects subscribing patients to
top doctors in more than 150 specialties. For $750 a year, a member can receive
health-care advice from high-profile
medical professionals in the United
States and abroad, Nazem said.

The company had $7,000 in revenue and $3 million in losses for the
quarter ending March 31. But Nazem —
who helped cre­ate the Oxford Health Plan and a forerunner to the Tenet Health­care Corp. hospital chain — says

he has
“tens of millions of dol­lars” in deals that will be rolled out over
the next year.

Huckabee, who joined the board in September, won’t ben­efit much
immediately from the company’s growth. He receives no pay for his seat on the
board, but instead was granted 25,000 shares in Finity Holding Inc., a related
company trading over-the-counter at just over one cent.

Following a shareholder vote later this month, shares in Fin­ity Holding will convert in a “re­verse
stock split” into shares of Flagship Patient Advocates, at a rate of 125 to 1. That would leave Huckabee with 200 shares, which could
increase in value if inves­tors buy into Nazem’s plan.

After that, Huckabee and other board members will likely
receive additional shares in ex­change for their expertise, Na-

zem said.

Huckabee’s involvement
with Flagship Patient Advocates grew out
of the release of his 2005 book, Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and
Fork, as well as lectures on health policy he gave last year, said Alice Stewart, a spokesman for the governor,
a story that Nazem confirmed.

“I read his book, and a friend of a friend says he knew
him,” Nazem said. “I like … what he stands for.”

A sitting governor who is
also a member of the board of a pub­licly
traded company might raise eyebrows — if it
weren’t so close to
the end of Huckabee’s term, said Jay Barth, a professor of politics at Hendrix
College and a member of the Democratic Party’s State Committee.

“It’s not unusual at all for former elected officials to [join
corporate boards],” Barth said.

“It would not be happening if he had
longer left in his term.”

Graham Sloan, head of the
Ar­kansas Ethics Commission, said Huckabee’s board seat shouldn’t pose a
problem as long as his business associates aren’t given any special treatment

“I don’t think it’s that uncom­mon,”
he said. “A lot of members of the General Assembly sit on the
boards of corporations or bank boards.”

Nazem said he had an easy
an­swer for potential ethical issues.

“I told the governor
we’d nev­er do any deal with the state of Arkansas,” he said.

\ Flagship Patient Advocates has its eye on more far-flung territory — namely China and India.

“We’re hoping to become one of
the health-care companies of choice for the
2008 Olympics” in Beijing, Nazem said.