Santee posts $170 in Medicaid surgery payments for 2024, up 20.6%

In 2024, Santee Medicaid providers billed $170 for services within the Surgery category, based on figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represented a 20.6% rise from 2023, when providers billed $141 for the same category.

Medicaid is a joint federal-state public health insurance program that insures low-income individuals and families, seniors, children, and people with disabilities, making it a significant component of the U.S. health care system. Funding comes from both state and federal governments.

Because taxpayer dollars fund Medicaid payments, changes in local billing levels highlight trends in how public health care funding reaches communities.

The “Surgery” category groups specific Medicaid-billed services according to standardized HCPCS and CPT codes. In this analysis, individual billing codes were assigned to an exclusive service category using consistent code prefixes and numeric groupings, which allows for accurate tracking and ranking of services over time while avoiding duplicate counts.

Medicaid spending rose across multiple service categories, with Surgery ranked as the fourth-highest by total Medicaid payments in Santee in 2024.

Statewide in South Carolina, Surgery placed eighth in total payments in 2024.

Between 2019 and 2024, Medicaid payments in Santee tied to the Surgery category rose by $117, or 40.7%. Certain periods saw accelerated spending gains, most notably during consecutive years like 2023 and 2022.

Though Surgery category care spending was distributed citywide, a small number of ZIP codes saw most of the payments. In 2024, ZIP code 29142 accounted for a total of $170 in Medicaid payments tied to the Surgery category. Collectively, the leading ZIP code represented 100.1% of all related Medicaid payments in Santee that year.

Only a small set of individual billing codes made up the majority of Medicaid payments in the Surgery category.

For context, Surgery category-related Medicaid payments in Santee increased 20.6% from 2023 to 2024, while all Medicaid claim categories collectively rose 60.2% over that same period in the city.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, total federal and state spending on Medicaid rose to nearly $871.7 billion during fiscal year 2023, about 18% of all national health expenditures, and up from $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This growth of roughly 40% in just a few years stemmed mainly from expanded Medicaid enrollment and increased use during and after the pandemic.

Major federal budget changes enacted under the Trump administration have included actions aimed at reducing federal Medicaid outlays and restructuring the program. For instance, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is expected to cut federal Medicaid funding by more than $1 trillion in the next 10 years and brought changes such as work requirements and increased cost-sharing, potentially reducing coverage and shifting more of the fiscal burden onto states even as the program continues to support tens of millions of Americans.

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.