Hurley Medicaid spending on alcohol and drug treatment climbs to $377,455 in 2024

Hurley Medicaid providers submitted $377,455 in claims for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment services in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represented a 12.1% increase over 2023, when providers billed $336,833 for the same services.

Medicaid, administered by the states and funded jointly by federal and state governments, insures low-income families, seniors, children and people with disabilities. It is one of the largest programs in the U.S. health care system.

Because Medicaid dollars are sourced from taxpayers, shifts in local billing reflect how public health care resources are distributed in a community.

The “Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment” group covers several Medicaid-billed services categorized by care type, as defined by standardized HCPCS and CPT code groupings. This analysis assigned each billing code to a single service category based on specific code prefixes and numeric intervals, allowing related services to be tracked together without duplicate counting and ensuring ranking accuracy over time.

Spending through Medicaid rose in several service categories, but Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment accounted for the highest total Medicaid payments in Hurley in 2024.

Statewide in Wisconsin, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment was the third-largest Medicaid payment category for 2024.

Looking at the five years preceding 2024, Medicaid spending linked to Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment in Hurley grew by $229,142, or 154.5%. Some of the sharpest annual increases occurred in 2022 and 2021.

Spending for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment services was distributed citywide, but the funds were concentrated in just a few ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 54534 was responsible for $377,455 in Medicaid payments linked to this category, making up 100% of such payments in Hurley for the year.

Among Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment services, Medicaid payments were largely focused on a small set of billing codes.

Between 2024 and 2023, Hurley saw a 12.1% rise in Medicaid expenses for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment, compared to an 11.5% increase for all Medicaid service categories during that span.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, total federal and state Medicaid expenditures reached approximately $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023. This represents about 18% of overall national health costs, up from $613.5 billion in 2019 before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This jump reflects growth of about 40% over several years, mostly due to broader enrollment and increased utilization during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budget measures under the Trump administration featured major proposals to decrease federal Medicaid contributions and restructure the program. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to shrink federal Medicaid spending by more than $1 trillion over 10 years and impose new policies such as work requirements and higher cost-sharing. These changes could reduce coverage and limit funding for some recipients, shifting additional costs to states and slowing federal Medicaid growth, even as the program continues serving 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.