Ferndale Medicaid spending for alcohol and drug abuse treatment climbs 1.5% in 2024

Ferndale Medicaid providers billed $13,700,882 in 2024 for services in the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment category, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database show. This represented a 1.5% uptick from 2023, when providers filed claims totaling $13,498,383 for these services.

Medicaid, a publicly funded health insurance program managed by states with support from both federal and state governments, assists low-income individuals and families, seniors, children, and people with disabilities, making it a central component of the U.S. medical system. For more details, see the joint federal and state funding explanation here.

Since Medicaid payments are generated from taxpayer money, changes in local billing levels offer insight into how a community allocates its public health resources.

The “Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment” category groups Medicaid-billed services based on the nature of care, using standard HCPCS and CPT code sets. For this analysis, each billing code was sorted into a single service group using uniform code ranges and prefixes, enabling precise analysis of related services without double-counting and maintaining consistent rankings over time.

While several service categories experienced increasing Medicaid expenditures, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment held the lead for total Medicaid payments in Ferndale in 2024.

Statewide in Michigan, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment also ranked as the top category for Medicaid payments in 2024.

During the five-year span prior to 2024, Ferndale’s Medicaid payments for the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment group climbed by $5,651,439, or 70.2%. Spending growth surged notably during specific years, including 2021 and 2022, which saw significant annual increases.

Although these services were provided throughout the city, most payments were focused in a small number of ZIP codes. In 2024, the 48220 ZIP code accounted for $13,700,881 of Medicaid payments for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment. As a result, the leading ZIP code made up 100% of such Medicaid payments in Ferndale for the year.

Among Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment services, Medicaid payment totals were concentrated among only a handful of billing codes in 2024.

Comparing categories, Medicaid payments for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment services in Ferndale grew by 1.5% from 2023 to 2024, while total claims across all Medicaid categories in the city rose by 3.5% over the same time period.

Data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services indicate combined federal and state Medicaid expenditures were about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023. This represented nearly 18% of all national health spending, a significant jump from $613.5 billion in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This growth amounts to an increase of about 40% in a short span, mainly due to higher Medicaid enrollment and greater care utilization surrounding the pandemic years.

Recent federal budget actions led by the Trump administration have included major proposed reductions to Medicaid funding and program changes. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by over $1 trillion in the next decade and introduces policies such as new work requirements and increased cost-sharing. Such measures could curtail funding and shift more financial responsibility to states, while the program continues to support 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.