NASCO Names John Ladaga President and Chief Executive Officer

ATLANTA, Oct. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- NASCO announced the appointment of John Ladaga as President and Chief Executive Officer. Most recently Mr. Ladaga served as President of EDS' Latin America region. Over the course of his 20- year tenure with EDS, he held crucial positions in the company's most strategic regions, notably as Vice President and General Manager of the U.S. Region Service Delivery where he led the region through a transformation that streamlined its organization and refocused its client service and market approach. That region subsequently experienced double-digit growth in profitability, representing approximately one-third of EDS' total revenues.

A pioneer in developing decision support systems, Mr. Ladaga and his team discovered innovative ways to marry legacy applications to Web-enabled technology, and transform legacy data into new decision-making tools. A consistently high-achieving executive, he was a recipient of the prestigious EDS Leadership Award as well as the EDS Service Excellence Award. Mr. Ladaga was also named among the 50 most important Hispanics in technology and business by Hispanic Engineer & Information Technology magazine.

In welcoming Mr. Ladaga to the company, Les Viegas, Chairman of NASCO's Executive Committee, says, "John's track record in business and healthcare technology is outstanding. In particular, he brings a great understanding of NASCO's core customers and their evolving needs. We are confident that John's leadership qualities, proven success in building customer service-focused organizations, and industry knowledge, specifically with clients like Wellmark, BlueCross BlueShield of Wisconsin, and Humana will enable him to lead NASCO to continued growth as the single-system health claims processing solution of choice, and increasingly as a strategic partner to our customers."

With a strong background in consultancy, business transformation, application solutions, business process, and hosting services to hundreds of clients in the health care, financial services, telecommunications, transportation, manufacturing, and consumer, retail and energy industries, Mr. Ladaga will be an asset to NASCO. He begins his new role with the company on October 16, 2006.

About NASCO:

Formed in 1987, NASCO offers system and service solutions exclusively to many BlueCross(R) and BlueShield(R) (BCBS) healthcare Plans. NASCO's single- system, flexible approach to health benefits processing offers cost-effective solutions, giving customers a competitive edge in the marketplace. Connecting many BlueCross and BlueShield Plans across the country, NASCO is currently used to process healthcare claims for more than 1,500 accounts. In 2005, BlueCross and BlueShield Plan customers used NASCO to process more than 127 million claims for over 10 million members. Web site: http://www.nasco.com/.