Payson Medicaid spending for surgery services rises 522% to $622 in 2024

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Payson billed a total of $622 for services under the Surgery category, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database shows. This amount represented a 522% jump compared with 2023, when the total for the same set of services reached $100.

Medicaid is a state-administered public health insurance program funded jointly by the federal and state governments. It covers low-income people and families, older adults, children, and individuals with disabilities, and ranks among the largest parts of the U.S. health care system.

As Medicaid is funded by taxpayer dollars, fluctuations in local billing levels reflect how a community allocates public health care funds.

The Surgery category encompasses a defined group of Medicaid-billed services categorized by the type of care provided, following standardized HCPCS and CPT code groupings. In this analysis, each billing code was classified into a single service category using consistent code prefixes and number ranges. This method enables the examination of related services as a group, prevents double counting, and ensures precise rankings over different years.

While Medicaid payments increased across a variety of service categories, Surgery ranked sixth by the total amount of Medicaid payments in Payson in 2024.

At the state level, Surgery was 11th among all categories in Utah for total Medicaid payments in 2024.

From 2019 through 2024, Medicaid payments linked to the Surgery category in Payson rose by $695, or 52.8%. Certain periods, including 2020 and 2022, saw steeper spending growth with pronounced year-over-year increases.

Although payments for Surgery services were distributed throughout Payson, the majority were concentrated in a small number of ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 84651 saw the largest Medicaid payments for Surgery, totaling $621. The top 1 ZIP code made up 99.9% of all Medicaid Surgery category payments in Payson that year.

Payments within the Surgery category were also concentrated among just a handful of individual billing codes.

For context, Medicaid payments for the Surgery category in Payson increased by 522% from 2023 to 2024, compared with a 5.8% overall rise across all Medicaid claim categories in the city for the same period.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined federal and state Medicaid spending reached about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, representing nearly 18% of total national health expenditures and reflecting a sharp rise from $613.5 billion in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This represents roughly 40% growth in just a few years, primarily due to greater enrollment and increased utilization during and following the pandemic period.

Recent federal budget legislation under the Trump administration has introduced substantial proposals to reduce federal Medicaid funding and restructure the program. For instance, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is expected to cut federal Medicaid spending by over $1 trillion in the next decade, and brings new policies like work requirements and higher cost-sharing. These measures could lower both coverage and funding for some participants, shifting expenses toward states and capping future federal Medicaid growth, even as the program continues serving 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.