The Colicky Babies of Puerto Rico

It’s one of those “ouch” moments—like the fact that nine of the ten zip codes with the highest rate of Medicare / Social Security abuse are in Puerto Rico. So what is it today? Well, The WIC program in Puerto Rico has a budget of over 200 million, and serves 184,000 people. Monthly, the government issues 700,000 checks, 80% of which are cashed at small businesses.

And who gets these benefits? Well, the majority are kids: 36, 000 under one year of age; 111, 000 from one to five. So that’s a total of 137, 000 kids. That in itself is a bit of a surprise, because according to Pew Research, there are 232,000 kids under 5 on the island. So over half of the kids on the island are participating in the program.

Curiously, this is not unusual; here’s the Urban Institute on the subject:

WIC serves many in need. More than half of all infants and more than a quarter of all children through age 4, pregnant women, and postpartum women participate. Nearly two-thirds of all WIC participants live below the federal poverty level (FPL) even though individuals with incomes less than 185 percent of FPL are eligible to participate. 

Right—and while it’s true that Puerto Rico leads the nation in WIC coverage, it’s not by much. The same Urban Institute has this to say:

The five states with the highest WIC coverage rates are Puerto Rico (78.7 percent), Vermont (76.3), the District of Columbia (76.2), California (73.7), and Minnesota (73.5). 

So none of this is particularly surprising. What is surprising? Well, 62% of the kids in Puerto Rico require special formulae, and in gringolandia? Only two percent. 

Nor is the special formula cheap—The New Day reports in its print edition of today that the special formula can reach up to 50 bucks a can. In addition, The New Day reports that some merchants are doing a bit of gouging:

“Sé que la administración no estaba administrando bien los fondos federales desde finales del año pasado. Estamos hablando como desde noviembre, por ahí... que se quedó sin administrador y ahí empezaron a haber malas decisiones. Un ejemplo, la leche Nutramigen en el mercado –para los efectos– se debe cobrar a $32. Los comercios regulares cobraban cuarenta y pico y el programa se los pagaba”, dijo [José Díaz, presidente de la Asociación de Comerciantes del WIC] al hablar de un esquema fraudulento que, según dijo, denunció a la “pasada administradora del WIC”.

(“I know the administration hasn’t been administering the federal funds well since the end of last year. We’re talking about from November on—when we haven’t had an administrator and then they started to make bad decisions. One example—the milk Nutrtamigen in the market costs 32$. The merchants charge forty something and the program pays it,” said José Díaz, head of the WIC Merchants Association, on speaking of a fraudulent scheme that, according to him, he reported to the “past administrator of WIC.” 

And it’s not just the merchants, according to one source, cited in the same article:

“Hay de todo. Hay comerciantes, hay participantes… pueden haber empleados. Hay médicos involucrados en una serie de esquemas. Están trabajando con ello. Se tardan más tiempo en hacer este tipo de investigaciones”, dijo [Dana Miró] la licenciada en nutrición.

(“There’s everything. There are merchants, there are participants, there could be employees. There are doctors involved in a series of schemes. They’re working with them. It takes a long time to do this type of investigation,” said Dana Miró, a specialist in nutrition.)

So the feds came to town, and will let us know—sometime in December—whether they will paralyze the program. It depends, apparently, on what they find and whether we can clean up our act.
The good news? We can, because that 62% that required special formulae?

Now down to 40!