Commerce Medicaid spending for ambulance and transport services climbs to $58,146 in 2024

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Commerce submitted $58,146 in claims for the Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies category, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This figure represents a 26.2% increase from 2023, when providers billed $46,076 for the same services.

Medicaid is a public health insurance program operated by states and funded jointly by federal and state governments. Serving low-income families and individuals, seniors, children, and people with disabilities, Medicaid is a major component of the U.S. health care system.

As Medicaid payments come from taxpayer funding, adjustments in local billing levels reveal how a community’s public health care dollars are distributed.

The “Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies” category includes Medicaid services determined by care type and based on standardized HCPCS and CPT code ranges. For this report, each billing code was grouped into a single service category using code prefixes and numeric ranges, allowing related services to be tracked together while preventing double counting and keeping rankings consistent over time.

While Medicaid spending was up in several areas, Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies had the highest overall Medicaid payments in Commerce for 2024.

Statewide in Georgia, this category ranked 10th for total Medicaid payments in 2024.

Between 2019 and 2024, Medicaid payments for the Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies category in Commerce grew by $81,127, or 58.3%. The growth in spending surged at certain points, with significant year-over-year gains noted in 2021 and 2020.

Although spending on Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies occurred throughout the city, payments were heavily concentrated in just a few ZIP codes. During 2024, ZIP code 30529 accounted for $58,145 of the total, representing 100% of Commerce Medicaid payments for this service category.

Within the Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies group, Medicaid spending was largely focused among a small number of billing codes.

For context, Commerce Medicaid payments for Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies increased by 26.2% from 2023 to 2024, compared with an overall 45.3% rise across all Medicaid claim categories in the city during the same interval.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined federal and state Medicaid expenditures reached about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, making up approximately 18% of national health spending and rising sharply from roughly $613.5 billion in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This nearly 40% increase over several years was fueled in large part by higher enrollment and more extensive utilization during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budget acts during the Trump years have proposed significant reductions to federal Medicaid funding and potential program restructuring. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is set to cut more than $1 trillion from federal Medicaid spending over ten years and introduce measures like work requirements and greater cost-sharing, which could reduce coverage and funding for some recipients. These changes are anticipated to shift more fiscal responsibility to the states and restrain the federal share of Medicaid, even as the program covers tens of 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.