Saratoga Springs Medicaid COVID-19 payments reached $10,722 in 2024

In 2024, Medicaid payments totaled a minimum of $10,722 in Saratoga Springs for services coded under HCPCS categories that are specifically associated with COVID-19, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database.

Medicaid, a public health insurance initiative managed by states and funded jointly by the federal and state governments, provides coverage for low-income families and individuals, children, older adults, and those with disabilities, making it a major element of the U.S. health care system.

Because Medicaid is taxpayer funded, fluctuations in local billing reflect how public health funds are distributed in a community.

For this study, services were counted as COVID-19–related if they matched HCPCS codes identified or classified as “COVID-19” or “coronavirus” in billing descriptions or reference files. This means that only directly labeled COVID-related claims are included, and any pandemic care billed under different or broader codes may not be captured in these figures.

As a point of reference, Brooklyn reported the highest Medicaid COVID-19 care payments in New York in 2024, amounting to $3,718,101 in virus-specific claims.

Records show Saratoga Hospital was the sole provider submitting Medicaid claims for COVID-19–related services in Saratoga Springs during 2024.

During the pandemic period, COVID-19–specific services made up a substantial portion of the growth in Saratoga Springs’ Medicaid spending.

Total Medicaid payments for all other types of claims increased by $1,902,965 between 2020 and 2024, a 19.8% rise.

In the two years right before the pandemic, Saratoga Springs had average annual Medicaid payments totaling $3,309,075.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, joint federal and state Medicaid spending reached about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023. This represented nearly 18% of all national health spending, up from roughly $613.5 billion in 2019, before the COVID-19 crisis.

This increase marks a growth of approximately 40% in just a few years, driven mainly by a surge in enrollment and greater demand for services during and after the pandemic phase.

Federal budget measures during the Trump administration included major initiatives to decrease federal Medicaid funding and change how the program is structured. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to cut over $1 trillion from federal Medicaid spending in the next decade. It introduces new policies like work requirements and more cost-sharing, which may reduce coverage and federal funding for some groups. These changes are anticipated to shift added costs to states and curb the increase in federal Medicaid contributions, though the program will continue serving tens of millions of Americans.

Note: Totals only include HCPCS codes explicitly identified for COVID-19 services and do not reflect all health care spending related to the pandemic.

This article’s data comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. You can view the source data here.