Flagstaff Medicaid payments for Medicine Services and Procedures climb 5.5% in 2024

Flagstaff Medicaid providers billed $3,673,040 in 2024 for Medicine Services and Procedures, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This figure was up 5.5% from 2023, when Medicaid claims for this service category totaled $3,481,444.

Medicaid, a public health insurance program operated by the states and funded by both federal and state governments, covers low-income individuals and families, children, people with disabilities, and seniors. The program is one of the largest components of the U.S. health system.

Because Medicaid’s payments rely on taxpayer funding, shifts in local billing amounts highlight how public health care funds are distributed in each community.

The “Medicine Services and Procedures” classification covers a range of Medicaid-billed services grouped by care type using established HCPCS and CPT code conventions. In this reporting, billing codes were mapped to discrete service categories through standard code prefixes and numbers, making it possible to analyze similar services together, prevent double counting, and maintain consistent rankings over time.

Medicine Services and Procedures represented the fifth-largest Medicaid payment category in Flagstaff in 2024, among several others where spending grew.

The Medicine Services and Procedures category tracked the fifth-highest total Medicaid payments statewide in Arizona for 2024.

Between 2019 and 2024, Flagstaff Medicaid payments associated with Medicine Services and Procedures grew by $1,113,043, or 43.5%. Some years, such as 2021 and 2023, saw pronounced annual growth for this category.

The spending for Medicine Services and Procedures was spread across Flagstaff but was heavily focused in a handful of ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 86004 had payments totaling $2,494,789, and 86001 had $1,178,250. These 2 ZIP codes together made up the entirety of Medicaid payments for this category in Flagstaff in that year.

In addition, Medicaid payments within Medicine Services and Procedures were concentrated among select billing codes.

From 2023 to 2024, Medicine Services and Procedures payments in Flagstaff rose 5.5%, while overall Medicaid claim categories in the city saw a change of 8.4% during the same period.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined federal and state Medicaid outlays totaled about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, accounting for nearly 18% of national health expenses, which was a notable increase from around $613.5 billion in 2019, before COVID-19.

This growth amounts to approximately 40% over just a few years, driven primarily by enrollment increases and greater service use during and after the pandemic.

Federal budget legislation during the Trump administration featured major proposals to decrease Medicaid funding and reorganize the program. For instance, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to trim more than $1 trillion from federal Medicaid expenditures over a decade and institute work requirements and steeper cost-sharing, possibly reducing both coverage and funding for certain recipients. These policies could shift added costs to states and slow the growth of federal Medicaid resources, though the program continues to cover 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.