Sacramento Medicaid spending for medicine services and procedures climbs 24.1% in 2024

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Sacramento billed $60,063,662 for services categorized under Medicine Services and Procedures, based on data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This figure represents a 24.1% jump from 2023, when $48,398,671 in claims were reported for the same category.

Medicaid is a public insurance program managed by states and jointly funded by federal and state governments. The program covers low-income individuals and families, seniors, children, and those with disabilities, making it one of the largest sectors in the U.S. health care system.

Since Medicaid payments are taxpayer-funded, trends in local billing show how public health dollars are allocated within a community.

The “Medicine Services and Procedures” category encompasses Medicaid-billed services defined by care type using standardized HCPCS and CPT code groupings. For this report, each billing code was placed in a single service category using consistent code prefixes and number ranges. This approach allows related services to be viewed as a group, helping avoid double counting and ensuring accurate trend comparisons over time.

While Medicaid expenditures rose across several categories, Medicine Services and Procedures ranked fourth overall in Sacramento for 2024 by total payments.

Statewide in California, Medicine Services and Procedures was the third-largest Medicaid payment category in 2024.

Between 2020 and 2024, Medicaid payments for the Medicine Services and Procedures category in Sacramento saw an increase of $36,498,366, or 154.9%. The growth rate accelerated during certain years, with significant year-to-year rises noted in 2023 and 2021.

Although spending for Medicine Services and Procedures was distributed across Sacramento, payment volume was concentrated within a few ZIP codes. In 2024, the ZIP codes with the highest Medicaid payments in this category included 95823 at $31,851,435, 95816 with $6,458,253, and 95817 totaling $5,487,527. These top 3 ZIP codes together accounted for 72.9% of Sacramento’s Medicaid payments in this category during the year.

Within the Medicine Services and Procedures category, a select group of billing codes accounted for most Medicaid payments.

For comparison, while Medicaid payments for Medicine Services and Procedures in Sacramento rose by 24.1% between 2024 and 2023, payments across all Medicaid service categories in the city increased by just 2.8% during this time frame.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, total federal and state Medicaid expenditures reached about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, making up around 18% of national health care spending. This is a significant increase from the $613.5 billion spent in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This growth represents about a 40% increase over several years, largely due to expanded enrollment and higher demand for services during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budget legislation enacted under the Trump administration brought substantial proposals to decrease federal Medicaid funding and alter the structure of the program. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed in 2025, is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $1 trillion over the next decade and implements policies such as work requirements and increased cost-sharing, which could limit coverage and funding for some recipients. These policy changes are set to shift more Medicaid costs to states and restrict growth in federal support, even as the program continues to cover tens of millions of Americans.

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.