Highland Medicaid payments for medicine services reach $1.8 million in 2024, rising 6.5%

In 2024, Highland Medicaid providers billed $1,840,907 for services in the Medicine Services and Procedures category, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database show. This was a 6.5% rise from the $1,728,908 submitted in 2023 for the same kind of services.

Medicaid, administered by the states and funded in partnership between federal and state governments, provides health insurance coverage to low-income individuals and families, children, seniors, and people with disabilities, making it one of the primary components of U.S. health care.

Because Medicaid payments originate from taxpayer funding, adjustments in local billing levels represent shifts in how a community’s public health care dollars are spent.

The “Medicine Services and Procedures” group includes Medicaid claims for services determined by type of care, using standardized HCPCS and CPT coding. Each billing code in this study is tied to just one service category based on standardized code prefixes and numeric ranges, allowing assessment of grouped services while avoiding duplicate counting and supporting consistent rankings.

Though Medicaid allocations increased across several categories, Medicine Services and Procedures accounted for the highest Medicaid payments in Highland in 2024.

Over the five-year period ending in 2024, payments linked to Medicine Services and Procedures in Highland rose $697,520, or 61%. Periods of sharper growth occurred in 2021 and 2020, marking significant year-over-year gains.

Spending on Medicine Services and Procedures was distributed citywide, but payments largely centered in only a few ZIP codes. During 2024, ZIP code 92346 alone accounted for $1,840,906 in this category. The leading ZIP code comprised 100% of these Medicaid payments for the year in Highland.

Meanwhile, most Medicine Services and Procedures Medicaid funding concentrated within a small number of individual billing codes.

To compare, the 6.5% increase for Highland’s Medicine Services and Procedures from 2023 to 2024 contrasted with a 12.1% change across all Medicaid claim categories locally in the same timeframe.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services report that total federal and state Medicaid spending hit roughly $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023—about 18% of overall national health expenditures—a notable climb from approximately $613.5 billion in 2019, pre-pandemic.

This expansion represents a roughly 40% surge in a few years, mainly tied to higher enrollment and greater use of health care during and following the pandemic.

Recent federal budget measures enacted under the Trump administration proposed major reductions to federal Medicaid funding, altering the program’s structure. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is expected to trim federal Medicaid spending by over $1 trillion through the next decade, introducing provisions like work requirements and increased out-of-pocket costs. These changes are likely to shift financial responsibility to states and slow the growth of federal Medicaid contributions, even as the program continues to support tens of millions nationwide.

Note: HCPCS codes are shown for context within the category. Category totals and rankings in this article are based on standardized service groupings rather than individual billing codes.

Information in this article was obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. The source data can be found here.