Born in the USA

I came across a story this week about a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas that had a literal baby boom.

48 babies were born at Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center in just 41 hours. That's an average of more than one baby born per hour in just under two days.

It makes you wonder what was going on in Fort Worth nine months ago?

It also made me wonder about the underlying story concerning those births?

How many of the babies were born to unwed mothers?

If the numbers reflect the national average, 40% of the babies born were out of wedlock. If the babies were Black that number is 77%. If Hispanic, 49%.

How many of the babies that were delivered were paid for by Medicaid?  In other words, how many of those babies were paid for by YOU, the taxpayer?

The national average is 43%. For blacks it is 66%. For Hispanics it is 60%. In Texas, 54% of all births are paid for by Medicaid!

How many of the babies were born to illegal immigrants?

Just as we don't seem to have good number on how many illegal immigrants are in the country I could not find any reliable numbers on how many babies are being born to illegals in the United States each year. The best estimate I could find is that approximately 8% of all babies born are to illegals.

However, there are actual statistics on the number of births to foreign born mothers (legal and illegal). In the most recent year, 23% of all births in the United States were to foreign born mothers. However, only 14% of the entire population is foreign born.

You can expect that in Texas a high proportion of the babies born in that Fort Worth hospital were to foreign-born mothers and a significant number were illegal aliens.

For example, in 2006 Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas (the hospital JFK was taken to after he was shot) reported that 70% of its 16,000 births that year were to illegal immigrants.

If that was the number in 2006 I wonder what the number is in 2018?  It is clear that Parkland Hospital and others have decided that it is not politically correct to report these numbers any longer. You can only guess what they might reveal.

All births are a cause for celebration.

All of the mothers who underwent labor in Fort Worth and anywher else should also be celebrated.

However, being born in the USA means something a lot different today than it did 66 years ago..

Shown below is a hospital bill for the birth of a baby and a four-day stay in the hospital for mother and baby on this exact day 66 years ago.

The total bill----$82.56!

Notice the cost per day in the hospital? $11 per day.

Hospital costs for a vaginal birth today are estimated to be approximately $10,000 and that would generally only involve a day or two in the hospital.

A lot has happened involving born in the USA since 1952.

In 1952, only 3.9% of births were out of wedlock. Today they are 40%. Black births out of wedlock were not separately tracked until the late 1960's. However, non-white illegitimate births were tracked. It was 19% in 1952. Today it is 77% for Blacks and 49% for Hispanics.

In 1952, 0% of births were paid by Medicaid. The program wasn't enacted until 1965. Today 43% of all births are paid by the taxpayers. It makes you wonder how those births got paid in 1952?

In 1952, the United States did not even bother to track the births in the United States to foreign-born mothers. It was insignificant. It appears that this data was first collected in 1990 when births to foreign-born mothers was 16%. Today it is 23%.

Suffice it to say, being born in the USA is a lot of different today than it was 66 years ago.

A lot has happened, indeed.