Medicaid payments for ambulance and transport services in Alderson rose 71.5% to $35,646 in 2024

In Alderson, Medicaid providers billed $35,646 for Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represented a 71.5% jump over 2023, when claims for the same service totaled $20,784.

Medicaid operates as a public health insurance initiative administered by states and funded jointly by federal and state governments. The program covers low-income residents, older adults, children, and individuals with disabilities, making it one of the nation’s most significant health care programs.

Since Medicaid funding is sourced from taxpayers, fluctuations in local billing demonstrate how public health care funds are distributed within a community.

The “Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies” grouping is defined by service type based on standardized HCPCS and CPT coding. For this report, each code was assigned to a unique service category using shared code prefixes and number ranges, enabling related services to be tracked together while avoiding double counting and ensuring rankings remain accurate over time.

While Medicaid outlays rose in various categories, Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies ranked as the second-largest category by total Medicaid payments in Alderson for 2024.

Statewide in West Virginia, this category was the seventh highest by total Medicaid reimbursements in 2024.

Over the five years prior to 2024, Alderson’s Medicaid payments for Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies grew by $9,112, or 34.3%. Spending growth accelerated in select years, with notable annual increases in 2022 and 2020.

Spending for these services spanned the city but was focused within a few ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 24910 saw the highest total for this category, reaching $35,645. This ZIP code alone accounted for 100% of Alderson’s Medicaid payments for Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies that year.

Payments within this category were dominated by a small subset of billing codes.

To put these figures in context, payments in Alderson tied to Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies surged 71.5% from 2023 to 2024, while the change across all Medicaid claim types in the city was 18% over the same period.

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

The rise reflects nearly 40% growth in just a few years, primarily driven by increased enrollment and greater use during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budgets under the Trump administration have featured proposals to scale back federal Medicaid funding and restructure the program. For example, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed in 2025, is projected to trim federal Medicaid spending by more than $1 trillion over the next decade while introducing requirements such as work mandates and higher cost-sharing that may restrict coverage and funding for certain recipients. These adjustments are expected to shift more financial responsibility to states and limit the growth of federal Medicaid support, even as the program continues to serve tens of millions of people.

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.