(CNSNews.com) -- When asked if it was a good thing that 42% of the babies born in America in 2020 were born on Medicaid, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said, “No, no, no. It’s very unfortunate.”
Tuberville, who formerly served as the head football coach at Auburn University, also said that Democrats oppose the nuclear family, but “we should be for two-parent homes that can raise their kids the right way….”
At the Capitol on Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Sen. Tuberville, “According to the CDC, 42% of the babies born in America in 2020 were born on Medicaid. Is that a good thing?”
The senator said, “No, no, no. It’s very unfortunate. Of course, coaching for years I saw many, many, many one-parent homes, and that’s one of the problems we’re having in this country, we don’t have families.”
“Unfortunately, the Democrats are against the nuclear family and they should be just the opposite,” said the senator. “We should be for two-parent homes that can raise their kids the right way and not have those problems.”
CNSNews.com followed up with the question, “40.5% of the babies were born to unmarried mothers. Do you think that’s related to the high number born on Medicaid?”
“Is it a problem? I don’t think it’s definitely directly related,” Tuberville replied. “Again, we’ve -- the morals in our country have dropped so much. We’re trying to run God out of our country, out of our lives, and all of the character things that go along with marriage and family are being destroyed, and it’s being destroyed intentionally from the left.”
“And if we continue to let that happen, all these other things we were worried about it’s not going to—they're not even going to touch the problem that we’re going to have if we continue to have single parent homes or no parent homes,” he said.
Last week, the CDC released new data on births in 2020 listing the statistics of babies born on Medicaid, born to married and unmarried mothers, the race of the mothers, as well as other relevant information.
Women who gave birth were either on Medicaid or used private insurance as the main source of paying for the delivery. While births on private insurance increased from 50.2% the year before to 50.6%, the percentage of Medicaid-covered births decreased from 42.1% to 42.0%.
The percentage of babies who were born to unmarried women overall in 2020 increased 1% from the year prior to 40.5%.
The CDC created tables that list the births of babies to unmarried mothers beginning in the 1940’s. The percentage at that time for all races was only 3.8% of unmarried women who gave birth. In 1999 it hit 33%.
“Authorized by Title XIX of the Social Security Act, Medicaid was signed into law in 1965 alongside Medicare. All states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories have Medicaid programs designed to provide health coverage for low-income people,” the Medicaid.gov website says. “Although the Federal government establishes certain parameters for all states to follow, each state administers their Medicaid program differently, resulting in variations in Medicaid coverage across the country.”