Aurora Medicaid claims for alcohol, drug abuse treatment reach $59M in 2024

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Aurora billed $58,972,493 for services identified within the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment category, based on data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represented a 57.2% jump compared to 2023, when billing for the category totaled $37,519,897.

Medicaid, a public health insurance program operated by individual states and funded jointly by the federal government and states, covers low-income people and families, seniors, children, and individuals with disabilities. This makes it one of the largest components of the U.S. health care landscape.

Because funding for Medicaid comes from taxpayers, shifts in billing at the community level show how public dollars for health services are spent locally.

The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment category reflects Medicaid-eligible services defined by the type of care delivered, according to designated HCPCS and CPT billing codes. For this analysis, billing codes were consistently placed into a single service category using shared prefix and number ranges, so related services could be tracked reliably over time, freeing results from double counting.

Amid overall growth in Medicaid expenditures, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment ranked as Aurora’s second-largest category by payments in 2024.

Statewide, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment was third among Medicaid categories in Colorado based on payments that year.

Between 2019 and 2024, Medicaid payments linked to Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment in Aurora grew by $46,826,947, a 385.5% rise. Notable spikes in year-over-year spending were observed in 2023 and 2022.

While funding for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment spanned multiple areas across Aurora, the payments were heavily focused in a few ZIP codes: 80014 logged $26,028,220, 80012 recorded $14,794,718, and 80016 saw $5,110,665 in 2024. Together, these top 3 ZIP codes represented 77.9% of Aurora’s total Medicaid payments for this category.

Within the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment grouping, only a small number of billing codes accounted for most Medicaid payments.

To compare, Aurora saw a 57.2% year-over-year increase in Medicaid payments for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment from 2023 to 2024, vs. just a 3.6% overall increase across all claim categories during that time.

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

This growth represents about a 40% surge over several years, largely attributed to greater enrollment and increased utilization throughout and following the pandemic.

Recent federal budget measures enacted during the Trump administration have outlined major reductions to federal Medicaid funding and program restructuring. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed into law in 2025, is projected to reduce federal Medicaid expenditures by over $1 trillion over the coming decade. The law includes provisions such as imposing work requirements and raising cost-sharing, changes poised to decrease benefits and shift financial responsibility to the states, even as Medicaid continues to serve millions nationwide.

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.