Medicaid payments for medicine services and procedures reach $23.7 million in Silver Spring for 2024

Silver Spring Medicaid providers billed a total of $23,737,745 in 2024 for services falling under the Medicine Services and Procedures category, based on figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This was a 15.2% rise compared to 2023, when $20,605,781 in claims were reported for the same service type.

Medicaid is a public health insurance program operating under state management and funded collaboratively by federal and state governments. It serves low-income residents, families, seniors, children, and people with disabilities, making it one of the nation’s biggest health care programs.

Because Medicaid is taxpayer funded, fluctuations in local billing levels highlight how public health care resources are distributed within a community.

The “Medicine Services and Procedures” category includes Medicaid-billed services grouped by the type of care provided, based on standardized HCPCS and CPT code groupings. For this review, each billing code was placed in a single service category according to consistent code prefixes and number ranges, enabling analysis of related services while preventing double counting and maintaining accurate ranks over time.

Spending climbed across several Medicaid service categories, but Medicine Services and Procedures placed second in Silver Spring for total Medicaid payments in 2024.

Statewide in Maryland, Medicine Services and Procedures was the third highest Medicaid payment category in 2024.

From 2019 to 2024, Medicaid payments in the Medicine Services and Procedures group increased by $16,868,713, equaling 245.6% growth in Silver Spring. Periods of accelerated spending were noted, with significant annual increases observed in 2022 and 2023.

Although medicine-related Medicaid spending was distributed throughout the city, most payments were concentrated in a small group of ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 20904 accounted for $14,618,668, 20910 for $5,015,100, and 20906 for $2,419,136 in Medicaid payments for this category. Collectively, the top 3 ZIP codes captured 92.9% of all Medicaid payments in the category for Silver Spring during the year.

Medicaid payments in the Medicine Services and Procedures category were also focused on a limited number of specific billing codes.

Between 2024 and 2023, Medicaid payments for Medicine Services and Procedures in Silver Spring rose by 15.2%. This compares to a 6.5% increase across all Medicaid claim categories in the area over the same span.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined federal and state Medicaid spending reached approximately $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, accounting for around 18% of total U.S. health expenditures, up sharply from about $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This increase amounts to about 40% growth in a few years, largely due to expanded Medicaid enrollment and higher service use during and after the pandemic years.

Recent federal budget legislation enacted during the Trump administration contained significant proposals to reduce federal Medicaid spending and change the program. For instance, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is set to decrease federal Medicaid expenditures by over $1 trillion within 10 years. The law also brings policies including work requirements and increased cost-sharing, which may reduce coverage and funding for certain beneficiaries and are likely to increase state responsibility and slow federal growth even as Medicaid covers 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.