Hudson Medicaid spending on dental services up 60.3% in 2024

In 2024, Hudson Medicaid providers billed $92,471 for services in the Dental Services category, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represented a 60.3% rise from 2023, when $57,692 was billed for the same services.

Medicaid, a state-run, federally and state-financed health insurance initiative, covers low-income individuals and families, seniors, children, and those with disabilities, making it a central component of the U.S. health care system. More about how it is funded can be found at this explainer.

Since Medicaid is funded by taxpayers, changes in billing levels locally are an indicator of how public health dollars are spent within a community.

The “Dental Services” category groups Medicaid claims by the type of dental care provided, based on standardized HCPCS and CPT code definitions. For this analysis, a consistent assignment of billing codes to categories by specific prefixes and ranges allowed all relevant services to be tallied together, removing duplicates and keeping rankings accurate year to year.

Dental Services accounted for the largest share of total Medicaid payments in Hudson for 2024 among all service categories studied.

At the state level, Dental Services ranked seventh in total Medicaid payments in Colorado in 2024.

From 2019 to 2024, Medicaid payments for Dental Services in Hudson rose by $79,658, or 621.7%. Growth rates varied over individual years, with substantial increases observed in both 2022 and 2023.

Though dental services were provided throughout Hudson, most Medicaid payments were focused in just a few ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 80642 accounted for $92,470 of these payments, making up all of Hudson’s payments for Dental Services under Medicaid that year.

Within this category, only a subset of individual billing codes saw the bulk of the Medicaid payments.

For further context, the 60.3% growth in Medicaid payments for Dental Services from 2023 to 2024 matched the percentage increase across all Medicaid claim categories in Hudson during that timeframe.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, joint federal and state Medicaid expenses reached about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, making up roughly 18% of total national health spending—an increase from approximately $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This jump marks approximately 40% growth in just a few years, driven mainly by increased enrollment and higher service usage during and following the pandemic.

Recent significant federal budget measures under the Trump administration have aimed to reduce Medicaid funding and alter program structure. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which became law in 2025, is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by over $1 trillion over the next decade and introduces policies like work requirements and increased cost-sharing, which could limit coverage and funding for certain beneficiaries. These changes anticipate shifting more costs to the states and constraining future growth in federal Medicaid support, even as the program remains essential for 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.