MCS Classicare Te Paga exceeds 1M transactions in October
Healthcare insurance provider MCS announced that its MCS Classicare Te Paga card, La Original, exceeded 1 million transactions in October, almost a year after it was implemented.
The company is marking the milestone because, it said that through this benefit, it has “contributed to improving the quality of life of more than 125,000 of its members.”
Through the multisectoral alliances MCS has locked down to assemble effort — for which it has teamed up with companies in the food, banking, and telephony sectors, as well as other businesses — and the money that it has paid out to recharge the cards, MCS has invested $70 million to benefit its subscribers, it added.
“Thanks to this multi-million dollar effort in favor of their health, our members have more left in their pockets and don’t have to stop buying their medicines or healthy food to pay for basic services such as water, electricity, telephone, gasoline, shopping and residential internet,” said Roberto Pando, president of MCS Life and MCS Advantage.
“This, for us, is a great satisfaction that we know transforms health care in Puerto Rico,” he said, adding that the million transactions “show the reliability and effectiveness of the benefit, as it is the first prototype in the industry.”
Pando said MCS will continue to expand the network of partners participating in the Te Paga card program. Currently, more than 1,000 supermarkets are already part of the Te Paga network. More than 600 community pharmacies will join the network as of January 2021, he said.
“When no one was talking about the social determinants of health, we at MCS began in 2007 to address these determinants through our community outreach Program. The program has yielded excellent results since then, but we knew we needed to do more,” Pando said.
When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services opened the opportunity to include benefits that address socioeconomic aspects of health, MCS opted to incorporate non-medical benefits that, based on the evidence published in the medical literature, had an impact on health, said Inés Hernández, MCS’s chief medical officer.
“As a result of our efforts, our regulatory agency allowed us in 2019 to include non-traditional services that impact these social determinants of health in the Medicare Advantage coverage, including the Te Paga card. We were pioneers in addressing these important factors that have such an influence on the health and quality of life of our older adults,” she said.
MCS has been combining the concept of social determinants of health with its clinical programs and benefits package for several years, as the company believes this will achieve a greater long-term impact on the lives of its members, she added.
