Harts sees $248 in 2024 Medicaid billing for medicine services and procedures

Providers in Harts submitted $248 in Medicaid charges for the Medicine Services and Procedures category in 2024, as reported by data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This total is a 92.2% jump from 2023, when claims reached $129 for the same services.

Medicaid, a state-administered public health insurance program jointly financed by federal and state governments, is designed for low-income individuals and families, seniors, children and people with disabilities, placing it among the nation’s largest health care programs.

As taxpayer-funded Medicaid payments fluctuate locally, the changing billing levels reflect how public health resources are distributed within the community.

The “Medicine Services and Procedures” group includes a range of billable Medicaid services categorized by type of care, based on standard HCPCS and CPT code groupings. For this review, services were sorted into a single category by using common code prefixes and number ranges, organizing related services collectively, preventing duplication, and ensuring accurate year-over-year ranking.

Medicaid expenditures climbed in several service categories, yet Medicine Services and Procedures placed fifth in 2024 among all categories in Harts by total Medicaid payments.

Statewide in West Virginia, Medicine Services and Procedures came in sixth by total Medicaid billing in 2024.

Between 2019 and 2024, Harts saw a $234 increase in Medicaid payments for the Medicine Services and Procedures category—an overall rise of 1671.4%. The spending increases were most pronounced in select years, with noted year-on-year spikes in 2021 and 2022.

Payments for care within the Medicine Services and Procedures category were issued throughout the area, but most of the funds concentrated in a small number of ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 25524 accounted for $247 in Medicaid payments for this category, with the highest-billed ZIP code making up 99.8% of the total category payments in Harts that year.

Billing within the Medicine Services and Procedures group was also focused on a limited set of service codes.

To compare, Medicaid billing for this category increased by 92.2% between 2024 and 2023, while billings across all Medicaid claim categories in the city grew by 6.1% over that same time.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined state and federal Medicaid outlays were about $871.7 billion in fiscal 2023, representing an estimated 18% of overall U.S. health spending—up sharply from roughly $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The jump in spending equals roughly 40% growth in only a few years, driven mainly by increasing enrollment and care usage throughout and following the pandemic.

Recent federal budget legislation under the Trump administration has featured substantial plans to curtail federal Medicaid investment and alter the program design. As an example, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” approved in 2025, is expected to trim federal Medicaid expenditures by more than $1 trillion over the coming decade and institutes new measures such as work requirements and higher beneficiary cost-sharing. These policy adjustments may lead to reduced coverage and lower funding for some Medicaid recipients, with greater financial responsibility shifting to states as the federal role grows more limited even as tens of millions remain covered by the program.

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.