Bluff City sees 53.6% jump in Medicaid payments for alcohol and drug abuse treatment in 2024

Bluff City health care providers billed $403,511 to Medicaid for services in the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment category in 2024, based on figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represented a 53.6% rise over 2023, when providers filed $262,636 in claims for the same service group.

Medicaid, a state-run program with joint state and federal funding, provides health coverage for low-income residents, older adults, children, and individuals with disabilities, making it one of the nation’s leading health programs.

Since Medicaid spending comes from taxpayers, shifts in local payment amounts reflect how communities allocate public funds for health services.

The “Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment” category encompasses groups of Medicaid-billed services that are organized by type of care delivered, using uniform HCPCS and CPT code designations. This results in related services being grouped together for analysis, ensuring accuracy in historical comparisons and rankings without overlapping claims.

In addition to overall growth, this category received the highest total Medicaid payments among service categories in Bluff City in 2024.

Statewide in Tennessee, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment was the third-highest service category for Medicaid outlays in 2024.

Between 2019 and 2024, Bluff City’s Medicaid expenditures for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment grew by $253,028, or 168.1%. Spending climbed most quickly during select years, particularly with notable increases in 2020 and 2021.

While payments were distributed citywide, most Medicaid spending on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment focused in certain ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 37618 led with $403,510, with this single ZIP code responsible for 100% of that category’s Medicaid payments in the city for the year.

Medicaid payments within Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment primarily concentrated among only a few specific billing codes.

From 2023 to 2024, Bluff City experienced a 53.6% increase in Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Medicaid claims, mirroring the change across all Medicaid claim categories in the area for that period.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, total federal and state Medicaid expenditures reached approximately $871.7 billion during fiscal year 2023, making up about 18% of the nation’s health spending and increasing from approximately $613.5 billion in 2019, before the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This equals a roughly 40% expansion in several years, mainly due to more participants enrolling and increased demand during and following the pandemic.

Recent federal budget actions from the Trump administration have included substantial proposals to curtail federal Medicaid dollars and reform how the program operates. One example, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is slated to trim over $1 trillion from federal Medicaid funds over 10 years while introducing work requirements and higher cost-sharing for recipients. These measures are expected to transfer more financial responsibility to states and constrain future federal spending growth for Medicaid, even though the program still covers tens of millions across the country.

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.