Medicaid spending for dental services in Phoenix up 5.9% in 2024

In 2024, providers in Phoenix billed Medicaid $34,372 for dental services, based on figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represents a 5.9% rise over 2023, which saw $32,449 billed for the equivalent services.

Medicaid is a state-run public health insurance program with funding shared by both federal and state governments. The program serves low-income people and families, seniors, children, and individuals with disabilities, making it a significant element of the U.S. health care system.

Since taxpayer dollars fund Medicaid payments, fluctuations in billing at the local level show how public health funding is distributed across communities.

The “Dental Services” grouping encompasses numerous Medicaid-billed treatments, organized by standardized HCPCS and CPT coding structures. For this report, coding was mapped to a single service category using established code prefixes and numeric ranges. This categorization enables analysts to review service trends, maintain accuracy in rankings over time, and avoid duplicate counts.

Dental services placed second among all Medicaid service categories in Phoenix for total payments made in 2024, with multiple service groupings showing overall increases.

Across New York, the Dental Services grouping was 11th by total Medicaid payments for 2024.

From 2020 to 2024, Medicaid billings related to the Dental Services category in Phoenix grew by $6,692, an increase of 16.3%. Periods such as 2020 and 2023 saw accelerated spending on these services compared with other years.

The share of dental care spending in Phoenix was primarily focused in certain ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 13135 reported Medicaid dental service payments of $34,371. That single ZIP code accounted for 100% of dental-related Medicaid payments citywide in this dataset.

Dollars spent within this service category were further concentrated among select billing codes representing specific types of dental care.

For additional comparison, Phoenix saw a 5.9% uptick in Medicaid payments for Dental Services between 2024 and 2023, while all Medicaid claim types in the city grew by 18.8% during the same span.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data shows that combined state and federal Medicaid outlays totaled about $871.7 billion for the 2023 fiscal year. This made up around 18% of overall national health spending, up from approximately $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to COVID-19.

That jump represents approximately 40% spending growth in just a few years, mainly the result of expanded enrollment and greater service utilization during and following the pandemic.

Recent budget measures enacted under the Trump administration introduced major proposals to scale back federal Medicaid funding and overhaul the program’s structure. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, will reduce more than $1 trillion in federal Medicaid spending over the next decade and implements work requirements and higher cost-sharing—measures that could reduce coverage and funding for some beneficiaries. The resulting changes are anticipated to pass more Medicaid costs to the states and restrict how quickly federal aid can grow, even as demand for program services stays high.

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.