Aurora Medicaid payments tied to national codes up 14.1% in 2024

In 2024, Aurora Medicaid providers billed $269,459,951 for services categorized under the National Codes Established for State Medicaid Agencies, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represents a 14.1% rise compared with 2023, when claims in this category totaled $236,224,146.

Medicaid is a public insurance program administered by states and financed in partnership with federal and state governments. The program supports low-income families and individuals, seniors, children, and people with disabilities, making it a major component of the U.S. health care system.

Because taxpayer contributions fund Medicaid, fluctuations in local billing levels indicate how public health care funds are spent in each community.

The “National Codes Established for State Medicaid Agencies” category groups Medicaid-billed services based on the type of care using standardized HCPCS and CPT code frameworks. For this review, service categories were determined by grouping related codes using code prefixes and numeric ranges. This method enables analysis of related services, avoids duplicate counts, and ensures ranking accuracy across years.

While Medicaid expenditures rose across many categories, National Codes Established for State Medicaid Agencies received the largest share of total Medicaid payments in Aurora in 2024.

Statewide in Colorado, the same category ranked first for total Medicaid payments in 2024.

Between 2019 and 2024, Aurora’s Medicaid payments for this category rose by $152,015,815, or 129.4%. The rate of spending growth accelerated during certain years, including noticeable year-to-year increases in 2022 and 2023.

Spending tied to this group of services was seen across Aurora, but payments primarily flowed to a small number of ZIP codes. In 2024, payments in ZIP code 80014 were $122,497,142; those in 80012 totaled $57,430,503; and in 80011, payments reached $41,391,311. These top three ZIP codes made up 82.1% of all payments for the category in the city that year.

Within the National Codes Established for State Medicaid Agencies category, Medicaid payments were concentrated among a relatively small set of specific billing codes.

For reference, Aurora’s Medicaid payments in this category rose 14.1% from 2023 to 2024, outpacing the 3.6% increase observed among all Medicaid claim categories in the city during the same timeframe.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined federal and state Medicaid outlays totaled about $871.7 billion during fiscal year 2023, making up roughly 18% of U.S. health spending. That’s up sharply from about $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This growth of around 40% over several years was largely fueled by higher enrollment and service use during and following the pandemic.

Recent federal budget legislation enacted during the Trump administration includes significant measures to cut federal Medicaid funding and overhaul the program structure. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is expected to reduce federal Medicaid support by more than $1 trillion over 10 years. The law also implements changes such as work requirements and greater cost-sharing, which may lower enrollment and government spending for certain groups. These adjustments are anticipated to increase states’ share of program funding while slowing the federal government’s contribution, despite Medicaid’s continued large role in coverage for millions of residents.

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.