Center’s Medicaid dental payments surge to $405,046 in 2024

Center health care providers billed $405,046 in Medicaid claims for services under the Dental Services category in 2024, figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database show. That amount represents a surge of 585.2% compared with 2023, when $59,114 was billed for the category.

Medicaid is a state-administered public health insurance program that receives both state and federal funding. It covers individuals and families with low incomes, children, seniors, and people with disabilities, making it one of the prominent components of the country’s health system. More about how it is financed can be found here.

With Medicaid funded by taxpayers, variations in billing levels at the local level reflect changes in how public health funding is managed within communities.

The “Dental Services” group consists of Medicaid-paid services identified by care type, using defined HCPCS and CPT code groupings. For this report, billing codes were sorted into service categories via uniform code prefixes and number ranges, meaning related care types can be evaluated together without duplicating submissions and maintaining comparability over time.

Dentistry saw the highest total Medicaid payments in Center in 2024 among all service categories, as Medicaid spending rose across several groupings.

Statewide in Colorado, Dental Services ranked seventh by overall Medicaid payments in 2024.

Between 2019 and 2024, Medicaid claims connected to Dental Services in Center rose by $182,876, reflecting an 82.3% increase. Significant rises were documented on a year-over-year basis in 2022 and 2023, signaling a more rapid pace in those periods.

Despite citywide access, payments within the Dental Services group were primarily concentrated in a few ZIP codes. In particular, ZIP code 81125 accounted for $405,046 in 2024, representing 100% of these Medicaid dental payments in Center.

Within this category, the funds were mainly associated with a small cluster of billing codes.

By comparison, the jump in Dental Services–linked Medicaid payments in Center was 585.2% between 2023 and 2024. During the same period, all categories of Medicaid claims in the city combined saw a 16% shift.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reports that, nationally, combined federal and state Medicaid spending reached roughly $871.7 billion during fiscal 2023, accounting for around 18% of overall health costs, a notable increase from about $613.5 billion in 2019 ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This uptick amounts to about 40% growth over several years, primarily because of increased enrollment and greater utilization during and following the pandemic.

Recently enacted federal budget measures from the Trump administration have included major plans to scale back federal Medicaid funding and revamp the structure. For instance, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed in 2025, is scheduled to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $1 trillion over 10 years. It introduces initiatives such as work requirements and higher cost-sharing, potentially cutting funding and coverage for some beneficiaries. This is projected to increase states’ financial burden and constrain federal support for Medicaid, while the program continues to serve tens of millions of people across the U.S.

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.